


A Terrible Liar

by wolfinred (clare_dragonfly)



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Agent As Unsub, Case Fic, F/M, Guro, Minor Character Death, Non Consensual, cm_bigbang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-08
Updated: 2011-08-08
Packaged: 2017-10-22 09:43:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 14
Words: 28,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clare_dragonfly/pseuds/wolfinred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>NATHAN. So you said a lot of them kill prostitutes?</p><p>REID. That’s the number one serial killer target, actually.</p><p>NATHAN. So is that for sex or because they think they’re dirty and need to be punished?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Eileen

**Author's Note:**

> Content notes: rape, torture, murder, Stockholm syndrome, nonlinear storytelling, turning a beloved character evil.

  
_I told you, a mother knows. We're animals, Spencer. We feel things.  
-Diana Reid, “The Instincts”_   


 

The sound of the key in the door wakes Eileen from her doze. She straightens up, tensing, and instantly shuts her eyes again, anticipating what comes next. Sure enough, she hears the sound of a lightswitch, then the buzz of fluorescent lights, and the view from behind her eyelids turns bright. She opens her eyes slowly, looking toward the door and trying to gauge the mood of the man entering through it and locking the door. Sometimes, if he's in a good mood, he lets her move around the room, or at least transfers her shackle to the bed.

Her eyes feel so dry it's hard to open them. Her tongue is thick in her mouth. It's been days since she's had anything to drink, and even longer without food. She doesn't know how long it's been. In a windowless basement room, with the only occasional companionship of a madman, it's hard to determine what time it is.

He bends in the corner and opens the cooler there, pouring something--fresh ice?--in. When he straightens, there is a bottle of water in his hand. He's probably in a good mood, then. She relaxes minutely, and stays silent, watching him approach.

He kneels down beside her, opening up the cap of the water bottle. “I’m sorry I was gone so long,” he says. His voice is soft and gentle. “I thought this would be an easy case. If I’d known, I would have left the water closer.”

She nods, her eyes tracking the water bottle, not really hearing what he says. The moment he lifts the bottle to her lips is blessed relief. He only lets her take a little sip at a time, softly telling her if she drinks too fast she’ll throw up. One part of her knows that’s true, and another part knows he’s exploiting it to make her more desperate, to make her rely on him.

And she is, and she does.

One bottle isn’t enough, but when she finishes it, he doesn’t get another, just stands and reaches into his pocket. He unlocks the shackle, and she gets unsteadily to her feet. He leads her to the bed like a dog on a leash. She collapses onto it with relief. It’s thin and hard, but after the concrete floor, it feels like a pile of feathers. The sheets are smooth against her bare skin. Now it’s only her bones that hurt.

He swings his messenger bag off his shoulder and sets it on the floor, then kneels on the bed, straddling her hips. He pulls a slim knife out of his pocket. “There’s a sandwich in my bag. If you’re a good girl, you’ll have it.”

She nods, her eyes on the knife, and gasps a little, whimpering with fear. She’s not even sure anymore whether she’s really afraid or it’s just her subconscious responding, remembering what he wants. He draws the knife lightly down her sternum, the blood beading up, and she lets out a high cry. It hurts. It makes him smile.

After six more cuts and six more screams, he’s removed his jacket and belt and he finally stands, opens the bag, and gives her the sandwich, a greasy sub with a lot of cheese. She huddles up in the corner to eat it, as best as she can, pressing unopened skin to the wounds to make the stinging go away. It’s a lot of food, and she can feel her stomach cramping, but she thinks she’ll be able to keep it down.

He strips the rest of the way while she’s eating, and when she finishes he doesn’t order her, just grabs the wrist that isn’t shackled and pulls her down onto her back again. She couldn’t resist even if she had her strength. He’s thin but he’s wiry. And he’s put away the knife and pulled out the gun.

He straddles her again. She squeezes her eyes shut as he strokes the barrel of the gun against her jaw. A tear creeps out of one eye, and she feels him lean down to lick it off.

Then there’s a loud, jangling noise. For one beautiful moment she believes it’s police sirens, that she’s saved. But he doesn’t tense, just bends over and reaches for his bag, and tears flow in earnest as she realizes it’s just his cell phone.

“Hi, Mom,” he says, sounding surprised. He continues to play with the gun, stroking her skin with it, flicking her nipples with the barrel. “How are you? It’s great to hear from you.”

The voice on the other side is tinny, but it’s silent in here and the woman enunciates, so Eileen can hear every word. “Spencer, are you all right?”

“Of course I am. Why? Is something wrong?”

“I’m worried about you, Spencer. I think that you are in danger. You need to be careful.”

“What makes you think that?” He’s smiling into the phone, even as he puts the gun down to press his finger into the cut on Eileen’s sternum, making her shake. But her shackle does give her room to move. She can reach the gun. While he’s distracted. Her hand creeps down the mattress.

“I told you, a mother knows.”

He pauses, silently, thinking, but he’s seen her movement: he reaches down and picks up the gun again, away from Eileen. He swings it casually on one finger. “You’re right, Mom. Thanks. I’ll be careful. What about you? Are you okay?”

“I just wanted to warn you.” The line goes dead. He frowns at it, then tosses it back into his bag.

He leans forward, his face merely inches from Eileen’s. She can feel his warm breath on her face. “She’s right, you know. A mother knows. I guess I’m going to have to move on. A pity, really. We were just getting to know each other.”

“You can let me go,” she gasps, her voice raw and sore. “I won’t tell anyone. I’ll… I’ll make up a story.”

He shakes his head, making his hair brush her cheeks. “It doesn’t work that way. Believe me, I know all about it.” He presses the barrel of the gun to her chest, just below her left breast, and before she can say anything else, he pulls the trigger.

A bang that shatters her thoughts, and then silence.

 

  
_Who the hell uses a revolver?  
Someone who doesn’t want to leave shell casings behind as evidence.  
-Derek Morgan and Spencer Reid, “Penelope”_   


 

Spencer lifts himself off from the body, panting. He’s cut it a little short—he’s only had Eileen for a little less than six months—but when it’s time to move on, it’s time to move on. Someday he’ll be caught, he knows, but he’s not ready for that day yet.

Now. Just leaving her here isn’t enough, not if they’re really on his trail as his mother believes—and if she believes it, he’s sure it’s true. Good thing he’s prepared for just such an eventuality. The water isn’t the only thing in the cooler.

He climbs off the bed and goes to it, first pulling out as many water bottles as he can fit in his bag, then getting out the gasoline. He sloshes it liberally over both Eileen and the mattress, even turning Eileen over carefully so as to get gasoline on the mattress below her and on her back. Then he gathers up his things very carefully. He doesn’t dress yet; better to get as little smoke on his clothing as possible.

He strikes a match and touches it very, very carefully to her hair. Then he gets out of there.

As he makes it out to the empty lot behind the even emptier building and pulls his clothes on, he can smell the blaze, destroying the mattress, eating her flesh. He relishes it, but he can’t stay long. Not that he’s worried about being caught here, but it’s even better if he’s somewhere else.

He takes a bus to Rock Creek Park, where memories and other things live. At this time of night, there are few legitimate patrons about, but no one gives him a second look as he walks down by the bank of the creek. When he can see no one else, the trees giving him cover even from the stars, he drops his key to the warehouse room into the creek.

It’s a good night to hunt, he thinks as he emerges into slightly better-lit areas, but he isn’t tonight, despite the prostitutes smiling and beckoning at him. He wouldn’t have anywhere to put one if he caught her, and anyway, it doesn’t tempt him now, so soon after Eileen. He’s sated, relaxed. It feels good just to walk.

It feels good to be alive.

 

  
_That’s the best thing about Halloween. You can be whatever you want to be.  
-Spencer Reid, “About Face”_   


 

The next day he goes into work to find the usual pile of paperwork. He’s relaxed and he gets through it quickly. He’s pretty sure at least some of this technically belongs to either Morgan or Prentiss, probably both, but he never minds that. As long as it gets done.

It’s a little past nine when the aforementioned coworkers walk in, clutching cups of coffee from the BAU kitchen. “Hey, Reid,” Prentiss calls as they approach his desk. “Did you hear about that warehouse fire?”

He shakes his head and leans back in his chair to look at them like he’s relaxed, though his heart is thudding a mile a minute. “No, I haven’t seen the news. What happened?”

Morgan leans on the desk. “Apparently the DC cops suspected there was a meth lab in the basement, so they were going to raid it, but before they could get there it was set on fire. When they got the fire put out there wasn’t any meth, but there was a body.”

“Weird.” He raises his eyebrows in surprise. “Do they have an ID? Is it related to any open cases?”

Prentiss shakes her head. “Last I checked, no ID. She was pretty badly burned, they can’t get any fingerprints or anything. Just thought it would be something we should keep an eye on. Makes me think of Richard Cottingham, you know?”

Spencer nods. “That’s right, he killed, decapitated and dismembered two women in a New York hotel and then set the room on fire.”

“We’re all familiar with the case, Reid,” Morgan says. But he’s used to Spencer talking too much.

Spencer gives a half-smile and continues, “But what’s really weird is that the fire was set the same night the cops were going to raid the place. That’s what you said, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” Prentiss nods.

“So how did he know?”

“Exactly,” Morgan says, tapping the desk. “I hope Metro is doing a real good screening for leaks in their system. They don’t want that happening again.”

Spencer nods thoughtfully, pushes away from his desk, and stands. “I’m gonna get some coffee.” He walks away quickly. He needs to be alone for a moment and let himself grin.

He still thinks he’ll be caught some day. The team is just too good. But at least for now, he’s a hell of a lot better.


	2. Flashback: Margareta

  
_It might help you forget, but it won’t make it go away.  
-Ethan, “Jones”_   


 

It’s hard. Every day is just as hard as the one before.

But every time he picks up his cash to count it, starting to decide which of the dealers would be the best option at this time of the day or night, he remembers the promise he made to Gideon. _I’ll never miss another plane._

It keeps him home. It keeps him healthy. And slowly, it starts to get better. The tiny needle marks start to fade. The monstrous need dulls its claws. The memories retreat. He can focus on cases again. In fact, his mind is sharper, better. He knows, a little more, what it’s like, and after that struggle, every part of him is stronger.

And then Gideon leaves.

He doesn’t just quit. He doesn’t just burn out on the job. Spencer could understand that. No, he burns out on his family. He burns out on _Spencer_.

He doesn’t just quit. He vanishes. He makes plans with Spencer and doesn’t even call to say he’s not going to make it. He just doesn’t show up. He leaves a note where he knows only Spencer will find it, but he makes Spencer do the work.

He doesn’t just quit. He abandons.

And the claws are sharp again, the veins burn with need, the memories surface and fill Spencer’s mind until he can barely see, let alone think straight.

But he can’t go back to the Dilaudid. He knows that now. He needs this job, and with his veins full of opiates, he can’t do it right. He can’t do anything right. He has to find something else.

And that’s when the thing that he’s been keeping buried in himself for thirteen years digs its way out.

 

  
_Tell me it doesn’t make it better.  
-Tobias Hankel, “Revelations”_   


 

He can’t help thinking of Nathan when he leaves his apartment, takes the bus into DC. Poor, scared, young Nathan Harris. He needed Spencer’s help so badly, and Spencer couldn’t tell him what he did. Even if he’d known how he did it, he wouldn’t be able to explain it. Not while there was a chance the rest of the team could hear.

Spencer learned, even before he joined the BAU, even before he started his training, to fake being a terrible liar. It’s stood him in good stead. He can sometimes lie to unsubs (not that it helped with Tobias Hankel) but when he tries to lie to the team, they always see through him. Or so they think.

When he lies it’s to hide the truth. When he hesitates and stumbles over words and even when he tried to hide the drugs it was always so they wouldn’t look deeper. He would have hidden his addiction if he’d thought it would matter. But he knew no one would report him. So it didn’t make a difference in his life.

As long as he keeps up layers of lies below the surface, no one has ever looked deeper.

He gets off the bus in Northwest DC. His pocket is full of cash. His observant eyes pick out the dealers at first, but he straightens his spine and walks down the sidewalk, away from them. It’s the girls he wants.

They’ve never been shy. In fact, there’s a blonde girl who reminds him of one of the ones in Kansas City, who walks right up to him and tugs his tie out of his vest, smiling. “Hi there, handsome.”

“Hi,” he says, awkward, nerdy Dr. Reid. He looks down at her blonde, eyelash-length bangs and sees JJ. He has to swallow against bile rising in his throat. “Sorry. You’re not what I’m looking for tonight.”

“Aww, are you sure?” she pouts, giving the tie a tug. He shakes his head and brushes past her, keeps walking.

There’s no shortage of choices, after all. His eyes flicker over blondes, redheads, brunettes, even girls with hair dyed impossible rainbow shades. Then a girl with raven curls and deep brown eyes reaches out to ruffle his hair and he stops in his tracks. He looks at her. Tiny and tough. Small breasts, nipples showing through her thin shirt, hipbones jutting just above the waistband of her jeans. Needle marks in her arms.

“Hi,” he says. “I’m Spencer.”

“Spencer?” Her voice is breathy and just barely accented. She’s probably even playing it up. “Nice to meet you. I’m Margareta. How about we get out of here?”

“I’d like that,” he says, making no secret of looking her up and down again. She smirks and cocks a hip. He curls his left hand in his pocket and agrees to the rates she gives him, his mind on other things.

She takes him to a dirty, seedy hotel. To his relief, it’s not the same one where he clung to Nathan’s wrist, trying to keep his blood from leaving his body. He keeps his head turned away, letting his hair fall across his face, as he pays for the room. He doesn’t see any security cameras, but he’s been on television before; it’s best if he can avoid being recognized.

He chooses a room on the second floor, off the ground but not too far. When they enter, he crosses to the window and checks the landscape under the pretense of closing the blinds. There’s a bum passed out down there, but the alley is mostly too narrow and filthy for much traffic. It’s perfect.

He turns back to Margareta; his surveillance has been quick enough that she’s barely finished shutting the door behind them. She smiles flirtatiously and steps toward him, reaching up to loosen his tie. “Don’t worry, baby. We’re all alone.”

“I know we are,” he says, allowing himself to smile back. He’s surprised at how calm he is. Excited, yes; nervous, no. This is easier than he thought it would be. He lets her pull off his tie and untuck his shirt, then reaches into the messenger bag that’s still on his shoulder and pulls out his handcuffs.

His hands are quick. She hasn’t seen what he’s doing yet. He cuffs one wrist before she has time to react, then as she screams and struggles, grabs the other, cuffing them both behind her back. When she’s secure he shoves her toward the bed. She stumbles back but doesn’t fall. “You asshole! This is not what we agreed to! Get these things off me right fucking now!”

“I don’t think so.” He shrugs off his jacket and unbuckles his belt. He’s hard already, seeing her struggle, watching the anger and fear play across her face. “I’m an FBI agent. I think you’re going to do what I say.” He feels a surge of satisfaction as her fear wins.

He walks toward her. She tries to glare at him, but her chin trembles. He pushes her down, roughly, making her fall onto the bed. She winces as she lands on her cuffed hands. He climbs onto the bed, straddling her, dragging his messenger bag up with him.

First things first. He gets his pants and boxers pushed down and grabs a condom out of his bag. As he rolls it on, he notices his fingers are trembling; perhaps he’s more anxious than he thought. Suddenly Margareta screams, high and sharp, and his hand reaches out without conscious volition and slaps her hard across the face. She yelps with pain and he sucks in his breath.

“Quiet,” he growls at her, ripping at her jeans. He scratches her skin, deliberately, making her whimper. He bends to lick off the blood welling up. It tastes heady, like a rain of pennies.

He gets the jeans off, then her lacy black panties, and groans as he thrusts into her. He can feel her body’s disinterest in him, the way the muscles spasm and try to push him away, but that only excites him more. When he feels her start to relax, he slaps her face again. There’s a bright red mark forming.

As he feels himself growing closer to climax, he reaches down, clumsily, into the pocket of his slacks. He pulls out the knife and flips it open. Margareta’s eyes widen and she starts to beg. “No, please don’t hurt me, I swear I won’t tell anyone, no charge or nothing…”

He ignores her. He plunges the knife straight down into her throat.

He lets out an involuntary groan of pleasure as her body spasms around him. She flails, frantically trying to get her arms out from underneath her body, flinging her head around in pain. Her voice only comes out as a gurgle. The blood bubbles in her mouth and through the wound, soaking bright red into the mattress.

As her body goes still, he comes hard enough to see stars.

When he can, he gets up, peels off the condom and puts it carefully in a plastic bag, and pulls out the knife. There’s more resistance than he expected; he must have been too full of adrenaline to notice it when he pushed it in. Now he’s relaxed, feeling light and calm, focused only on eliminating all traces of his presence. He walks to the bathroom and washes the knife thoroughly, rinsing and rinsing until there’s not even a trace of blood in the sink. He dries the knife on a hotel towel, then cleans the sink with it too, being careful to wipe anywhere there might be fingerprints.

He closes the knife, puts it back in his pocket, and pulls up and fastens his pants as he walks back to the bed. There he carefully unlocks and removes the handcuffs, disturbing Margareta’s pose as little as he can. The pool of blood is still spreading, slowly. He bends down to sniff it. The smell makes his mouth water.

He checks her body carefully, making sure he hasn’t left any hairs, then notices the scratch on her hip. But he’s prepared for that too. There are wipes in his bag, and he takes one out to clean any saliva away. For good measure, he uses the rest of the wipe to clean her wrists, lips, and vulva, as well as a couple of random spots on her legs. If someone notices the clean spots, let them wonder.

He packs everything up, then, clutching his bag close to his chest, goes to the window. It’s locked, but his magicians’ fingers make quick work of that. Before slipping out, he takes another wipe and removes his fingerprints from the blinds, the lock, and the sill. The cleaning staff should be grateful, if there is any; he’s leaving it cleaner than it was when he arrived.

It’s fully dark when he hits the ground, jarring his joints a bit. The bum is still there, still asleep. At one end of an alley he can hear grunts and moans—a cheaper hooker. He leaves the other way.

He can’t help smiling as he gets on another bus. This is so much better than Dilaudid. A little old lady smiles back at him.

He goes to Rock Creek Park. He drops his used condom in the creek; he drops his wipes in two different trash cans. He keeps the knife, rubbing his thumb over and over its curves.

 

  
_You were right, you don’t need a gun to kill somebody.  
-Spencer Reid, “LDSK”_   


 

The murder makes the news, but not anywhere that your average citizen would notice. It doesn’t reach the BAU, of course. One dead hooker does not a serial killer make.

He imagines how they’d profile him if they did look at the case. Highly organized offender. Male, between the ages of twenty-five and forty. Probably Hispanic. He smiles.

He will always be smarter.


	3. Texas

  
_It’s just aggressive opening, patient midgame, inevitable checkmate._  
-Spencer Reid, “The Uncanny Valley”  


 

There are men being garroted in Texas, one every couple of days and not slowing down. No forensic evidence, and no connection between the victims. As they get on the plane, Spencer fires off a quick text to Elle. “TX, near Austin. Might be a while.”

It’s become their routine in the last few years. Elle might have resigned from the FBI, but FLETC was happy to take her. She travels around doing training, profiler stuff and some kind of specialty firearms work. He’s never inquired for the details. Their relationship isn’t built on those things. But whenever one of them takes off for a new city they let the other know. A couple of times a year, their travels match up, and they take a break together. Usually in Elle’s hotel room, so the team doesn’t see. It’s not like he’s the only one who vanishes sometimes.

He has no idea where Elle is right now. For all he knows she’s in Maine. But he doesn’t worry about it, just hits send, flips his phone shut, and settles in to discuss the case.

“So could this be a female offender?” Morgan muses, wiggling a pen in his fingers.

“It’s definitely worth consideration,” Rossi says. “These men obviously aren’t expecting to be attacked. There are no defensive wounds or anything. And with so little overlap in their social or economic circles, they probably don’t know their attackers.”

“And the use of a garrote rather than manual strangulation or another MO indicates that the attacker may be small or weak—most likely not strong enough to overpower these men any other way,” Prentiss says, flipping through photographs.

“Yeah, but it would rule more people out if we could say that he—or she—is strong enough to overpower them.” Spencer shakes his head. “These are all strong, powerful men. It’s a very strange victimology, in my opinion.”

Hotch nods. “Normally, I’d expect an unsub focusing on a particular physical type to focus on race and hair color instead of physicality, but it’s just the opposite this time.”

“Could this be someone like the Son of Sam?” JJ asks. “Just trying to cause fear?”

“It could be, but I’d expect a gun or another weapon to be used, just like David Berkowitz did,” says Rossi. “A garrote just isn’t as threatening.”

“If someone’s coming up to you with a garrote, you’re probably not even going to notice it,” Spencer says. “Let alone think of whoever is killing these men. I think our unsub’s biggest focus is surprise.”

“I agree,” says Prentiss, nodding towards him, “especially based on where they’re found. Alleys, parking lots next to their own cars. And there’s no indication that they’re moved after death. The unsub comes out of hiding, kills them quickly, and then leaves them there.”

“There’s no sexual motivation,” says Rossi. “Really not a lot to go on, is there?”

“Reid, when we get there, you’ll work up a geographic profile,” Hotch says.

Spencer nods; he’s already been thinking about it. As Rossi said, there’s not a lot to go on, even geographically—the city they’re going to is a small one—but he tends to think better when he has markers and a map, anyway.

 

  
_…the brain of the psychopath was bathed in way too much serotonin during fetal development. As an adult, this brain is now numb to serotonin’s calming effects._  
-psychiatrist, ”Outfoxed”  


 

They head into the police station together, as a group, because there’s nothing to see at the last crime scene and they want to get started. They’ve been given a nice big conference room, and there’s a map on one wall, so Spencer’s already in the middle of working out the geography when it happens.

One of the cops—a young Hispanic guy with a thin mustache and a nervous air—comes in carrying a box marked “Melinda Carter.” Hotch stops him with a frown. “What’s this?”

“Aren’t you here to consult on this case?” the cop asks, taking a step back.

Hotch gestures at the boxes already on the table, the files the others are going through. “We have everything, don’t we? We were given to understand that there are only male victims.”

“Oh!” His eyes widen and he takes another step back. “You’re here to work on the other case. Sorry. I won’t bother you.”

“Wait,” says Rossi. “Is this another serial?”

It doesn’t take long to get the story out of the kid (Spencer thinks it’s okay to say that; this cop is younger than he is). Apparently, this city has two serial killers. One is garroting men; the other is strangling women. They’re mostly prostitutes. Spencer flashes back first to Eileen, then to St. Louis. He’s going to have to see if—no, how these killers are communicating. Based on the dates the cop is giving them, they’re paired.

Hotch tells the cop to bring in everything he has on the second killer, then stalks out of the room, his lips pressed into a thin line. Spencer looks away from his map to catch JJ’s eye. She winks at him. They’re all looking at each other, trying not to laugh before Hotch slams shut the door of the police chief’s office.

They can see through the window. The chief is on the phone when Hotch walks in and tries to get him to wait, but Hotch does everything short of taking the phone out of the man’s hand and slamming it down. He’s a big man, thick neck and cropped hair, probably an ex-Marine or football player, but the first inaudible words are barely out of Hotch’s mouth before this big man starts to shrink down. He knows he’s wrong now. He’s going to pay for it.

The team tries to go back to work, but occasionally they can hear through the glass when Hotch raises his voice. “Unacceptable.” “All the information.” “Just as much.” “Real.” The cops out in the bullpen aren’t working, either; Spencer sees a lot of grins. They don’t get along very well with their boss.

Finally, Hotch returns, and he looks much calmer, though only someone who knows him as well as the team does could see much difference. “Prentiss and Rossi,” he says. “Focus on the women. Morgan and I will look at the men. Reid, float. JJ, I want you to get a press conference together.”

“Of course,” says JJ. Spencer grins and grabs the rest of the markers out of his bag. Now he gets to use all of them.

 

  
_She’s right, a prostitute will get into a car with an unsub. It’s a victim you can isolate easily._  
-Spencer Reid, “To Hell…”  


 

They don’t get much of anywhere that day, except for the cops—and the city—admitting that each set of victims deserves just as much attention. Despite the fact that there are five women and four men, the evidence is much scantier on the women.

Four of the women were prostitutes and the fifth was a waitress at a dive bar. This is why prostitutes make the best victims, Spencer thinks; it’s not just that they’re easy to catch (though for him, that’s a major draw), it’s that nobody goes looking for them, few people worry about them. They’re invisible.

Still, he’s pretty sure they’re going to catch the women’s killer before the men’s. He’ll be easy enough to profile; white, like the women, poor, angry. He’s probably not a sexual sadist—the women are all manually strangled, but there’s no evidence that the unsub even touched them anywhere else.

In the hotel room bed, Spencer’s thoughts drift to Eileen; the hope in her eyes, just before she died.

 

  
_53 percent of serial killers have some form of mental illness in their family._  
-Spencer Reid, “Damaged”  


 

The next day another victim is found—another man, bringing the numbers equal. Spencer makes a timeline of all the deaths in the two cases. There’s definitely a response element going on here. The first woman was killed a week before the first man, but the last three pairs have had only two days between them. The time between pairs is decreasing, too. First two weeks, then ten days, then a week, then five days.

If they’re lucky, they’ll have another three to five days to catch one of the killers and interrupt the cycle. Spencer doesn’t think they’ll be lucky.

He pores over newspapers, making sure to check the classifieds, but there’s nothing that hints at communication. The dead men make the front page; the dead women make the front of the local news, when they’re lucky. But there is an article for each of them. The Mill Creek Killer and the Hollow Man had needed the classifieds because no one was paying attention to the Hollow Man’s kills. Maybe these two just need to read articles about each other.

He suggests this to the rest of the team, but isn’t convinced by his own hypothesis. There’s more to it than that. “I’m not really sure,” he confesses. “There’s something not quite right about it.”

Morgan nods. “The responses wouldn’t be getting so much faster if they were just reading about it in the newspaper the next day, would they?”

“No.” Spencer stops in his tracks. “They wouldn’t. Hang on.” He rushes out of their conference room, finds the detective who first brought them the files on the women. “Excuse me, I’m sorry, I need some information.”

The man nods alertly. “Anything.”

“Have there been any other recent murders? Solved or unsolved. Get me anything from the last six months to before the first prostitute murder.”

“Sure. Barking up a theory?”

“Maybe.” Spencer goes back to their conference room and stares at his map for a few minutes until the cop comes back with his files. “Thank you, thanks a lot.” He sits down, flipping through them at high speed. His hands feel agitated.

“Got something, Reid?” Hotch asks.

“Maybe. Maybe nothing.” His mind is working too fast for him to try to translate it into words. Hotch just nods and goes back to the file he’s looking through. He understands that this happens sometimes.

When he’s finished going through the files, he gets up and gets a cup of coffee to straighten out his thoughts before returning to Hotch and Morgan (JJ, Prentiss, and Rossi are out interviewing victims’ families). “They’re definitely communicating somehow. If we had a suspect, we could look at their computers, maybe…”

“What makes you so sure?” Hotch asks. Once Spencer would have been defensive, but now he and Hotch know each other well enough that he knows his boss just wants the information so they can all be on the same page. He knows Spencer is right; he just wants to know why.

“The Hollow Man and the Mill Creek Killer didn’t start responding to each other’s kills until after they started talking to each other in the classifieds. They were both killing before that. But I’ve looked through all of these murder cases from the last six months and there are no other murders that could be attributed to either of these killers. They both started killing at the same time—just a week apart.”

“The first two could have been coincidence,” Morgan says. Spencer shakes his head, but Morgan is already dialing his phone anyway.

“Hey, baby girl. I need something from you. Yeah, can you look for any murders or attempted murders that match either of these guys’ MOs?” There’s a pause. Spencer can almost hear Garcia’s keyboard. “Nothing, anywhere? Right, okay. Thanks, mama.” He hangs up. “I thought maybe there would be other murders somewhere else, and they could have come here to be together, but Garcia says there’s nothing unsolved that are just like these. Plenty of women manually strangled, but that usually comes with beating or rape as well.”

Hotch shakes his head. “They planned this. They must have been working together, or at least friends, for a while.” He sighs and takes out his cell phone. “I’ll call Dave, see if the others have any perspective on this.”

Morgan leans back, wiggling his pen between his fingers. “I wish one of them would contact us. That’s what I’d expect from an unsub of this type.”

“They’re both getting the same amount of attention now,” Spencer points out. “Maybe that’s all they wanted.”

“But they’re not going to stop killing.”

“No.” He frowns. “If they’re talking to each other, maybe that’s all they need.”

 

  
_I use Reid for his brain, but I never really teach him how to deal with things emotionally._  
-Aaron Hotchner, “Revelations”  


 

Evidence is still scanty, but there’s another dead prostitute the next day. She’s found in an alley on top of some bags of trash. Spencer is disappointed, but not surprised. He feels sure that there will be another man dead within twenty-four hours.

It still nags at him, as though there’s something he’s missing. “I’m going to rearrange these,” he says to no one in particular, frowning at their over-crowded evidence board.

“Go ahead,” says Rossi. “A different perspective is always a good idea.”

Spencer mutters agreement and starts taking everything down. He’s careful to keep them all in neat piles, each victim’s information with its own. They’ve been keeping the women on the left side and the men on the right. He eyeballs his timeline, decides the photos won’t fit the way he’s drawn it, and goes back to the evidence board.

He arranges them in order, the women above an invisible center line, the men below it. There’s no room for gaps, but he can see the order of the murders much better now. He’s chosen the close pictures, showing the faces and the marks on the neck, but now he adds a second picture above or below each, one that takes in the whole body and gives him an idea of the scene.

He takes a step back and squints at it, feeling like he’s trying to find the picture in a Magic Eye poster, except he’s always been good at those.

His eyes track the patterns, the marks on the necks, the careless poses of the victims. Then his mind makes the connection. “Guys,” he says, turning around.

Prentiss looks up quickly, obviously glad to have a break from whatever she's reading. “Got something, Mr. Brilliant?”

“I think so.” He ignores the tease. “I don’t think this is two communicating unsubs at all. I think it’s all one guy.”

“Hang on,” says Rossi. “I think we want the whole team in on this.”

When they’re all reconvened, Spencer explains. “The victims seem so random—or at least the male victims do—but they come in pairs.” He points to each pair of victims on his timeline. “Now, it could be two unsubs who have some kind of close communication, but they started killing at the same time.” He slaps his hand down flat over the faces of the first two. “And when you get past the differences in actual MO…”

“You’re right,” says Prentiss, interrupting him—but as long as she’s saying he’s right, he doesn’t mind. “The signature is almost the same. There are no marks on the victims other than the strangulation. They’re all left where they were killed.”

“They’re all physically attractive and healthy,” JJ adds. “None of the women even had signs of drug use.”

 _Margareta,_ , he thinks, but doesn’t break stride in his excitement. “Exactly. He ambushes them all, strangles them, and then doesn’t need them anymore, so he leaves them where they are.”

“But why the difference in MO?” asks Morgan.

“Purely practical. Remember what we were talking about on the plane, when we thought it was just the men? We figured this unsub is smaller or weaker than his victims. Well, he may be strong enough to manually strangle women, but he can’t do the same with big, muscular men. So he uses a garrote, and gets it around their necks before he can react.”

“Why not pick smaller victims, though?” says Rossi. “If the thrill is in overpowering men big enough to crush him, he wouldn’t go after women, too.”

“It’s not about power,” Spencer explains, his words nearly tripping over themselves. “Or it is, but not in the way you’d expect. You’re all familiar with the Zodiac killer.”

“Of course,” says Morgan, with a ‘get on with it’ look in his eyes.

Spencer nods. “In one of his letters to police, he wrote, ‘I will be reborn in paradise and they I have killed will become my slaves.’ Now I don’t think the Zodiac really believed that—he was just trying to cause fear—but this killer might well believe exactly that. It would explain his choices. He wants healthy, strong slaves, and while he cares what his female slaves look like, the men are just victims of opportunity.”

There’s a long silence. Then Hotch nods. “We need to put together a revised profile.”

 

  
_A doctor, so young. Your mother must be very proud._  
-Sarah Jean Dawes, “Riding the Lightning”  


 

They catch the unsub. He’s a skinny white guy. Totally delusional. Spencer’s theory pans out in its entirety. They tie him with fingerprints to two of the dead hookers and one of the dead men, but it’s not really necessary; he seems almost happy to confess. He must really believe it.

Spencer was right, but he’s not the one they all look at. On the jet home he closes his eyes and thinks about death.


	4. Flashback: Evolving

_I chose to study murderers. Why do you think that is?  
-Spencer Reid, “Memoriam”_

 

It isn’t enough.

Spencer replays Margareta’s rape and death over and over again in his mind. The pleasure lasts about a week before it starts to get stale. He remembers every single tiny detail, from the way he trapped her wrists in the cuffs to the way her blood tasted. But repeating it doesn’t satisfy him after a while. His veins start to itch again.

The faster he kills, the more likely the pattern will be picked up. If the pattern is picked up, the BAU will take the case, and he might be smarter, but they’re profilers he works with every day. Anyway, he knows instinctively that more isn’t the answer. He wishes he’d had more time with Margareta. Her fear was so beautiful. He wants more of that.

But he can’t do that by picking up hookers and taking them to hotels. So he spends a few hours combing real estate listings, looking for the ones where he can be anonymous and no one will ask too many questions.

He tours a few apartment buildings and warehouses before he finds the perfect one, a bare concrete room with a small bed already waiting in the corner and a hefty hook in one wall. He won’t even have to damage it. And the landlord boasts that it’s nearly soundproof.

He takes the room under the name Sanders and spends a few days picking out the perfect lock. It has to be a serious lock, difficult to pick, difficult to break—not that even Morgan could kick down this sturdy door. And it has to make a nice, satisfying _click_. He wants her to know he’s coming.

He gets a mattress for the bed and a cooler for the corner. The main reason he’s never gotten a cat is that his schedule is so unpredictable and he wouldn’t be home all the time to take care of it, and the only people he could let into his life enough to care for his pet are on the team. But even a hooker is smarter than a cat, so if he leaves her food and water, she’ll manage to keep herself alive until he returns.

He “borrows” a couple of extra pairs of handcuffs from the FBI and chains one to the bed, the other to the hook. (The ironies are delicious.) Then he takes a step back and surveys his little bunker with satisfaction.

He has a cage. Now he’s ready to hunt.


	5. Hunter

  
_It would be almost impossible for him to quit without help.  
-Spencer Reid, “Ashes and Dust”_   


 

Spencer rarely sleeps when he’s home. Sleeping is for hotel rooms and the jet. It’s for resting the exhausted mind. When he’s home, there’s never anything to give his mind a workout.

Besides, he’s found himself clutching a syringe in his sleep too many times to even touch his bed. When he does sleep nowadays, it’s mostly on his couch, with a black-and-white foreign film muted on the television. (He’s practicing his lip-reading. English isn’t enough of a challenge.)

And today, after catching a man who, Spencer would like to imagine, will get his slaves once the Texas prison system is done with him, he has work to do. He needs to find a new place. It can’t be in the neighborhood where the warehouse was, and it certainly can’t be in the neighborhood of his apartment. That doesn’t leave him too many options.

Between the bus and his apartment he’s bought three different newspapers. They’ll all have slightly different real estate sections. He’s not entirely certain what he’s looking for this time, beyond “cheap” and “anonymous.” But he knows he doesn’t want another concrete bunker. Not that the old one wasn’t perfectly serviceable, but variety is the spice of life, after all. And he doesn’t want to start mixing up his backdrops.

He calls three different apartment managers and makes arrangements to visit the next day. Then he turns on the television and picks up one of the scientific journals that have made a small pile while he was away solving crimes.

 

  
_This unsub has a torture chamber in the area. He’s not going to leave it empty for long.  
-Aaron Hotchner, “Out of the Light”_   


 

The first apartment is described as a basement room, but there are windows that look out directly onto the street. Spencer spends a long time staring up at them, considering, from different parts of the room. The manager—a fat, balding white man—stands in the doorway and fidgets. Since he’s saying nothing, Spencer ignores him and checks out the bathroom. There are no windows there, but it’s too small.

Not that hope is a bad thing. He likes imagining a girl chained to the opposite wall, pulling and straining to reach the window. But the glass is transparent, and there’s always the chance that someone will see what’s inside. People look down, after all, not up.

The second apartment has thin walls. He can hear a couple next door moaning and panting, though the manager seems oblivious. If those relatively quiet noises can be heard, someone will notice the screams. He passes it up.

It’s getting dark as he walks to the third, and the hookers are starting to come out. He rakes his eyes over them, and a few smile or call out to him, but none of them quite suit his taste. There are no saucy smiles, whipcord arms, steely eyes. Anyway, he can’t hunt with no trap, and a hooker’s no fun to him if he has to keep her alive.

He knows the third apartment is right as soon as he steps in. There’s something about the smell, like it hasn’t been touched by a human since it was built. It’s on the top floor, and it’s carpeted—thin, ugly brown carpet, but he can cover that with throw rugs, muffle anything that might leak to the apartment below. Like the other two, it’s a cramped studio, but he doesn’t need much room.

He walks to the single window and looks out. The scene immediately confronting him is a brick wall, inches away. He has to crane his neck to even see the windows on the building across. Perfect; no one will be able to see in his window.

“Fire escape is accessible from the hall,” says the manager, a big, bored black man. Spencer nods his approval.

Above, he can see more bricks and a thin strip of sky. Below, he can’t quite see the alley he knows is there, but it’s too narrow for anything but cats. “How much?” he asks.

They haggle a little over the rent, and Spencer lets the manager think he’s won on the utilities. It’s best, of course, if anyone he has contact with here thinks the same as everyone else—an unassuming, awkward kid, endearingly naïve. It might itch at him, but it makes him less suspicious. And after all, it’s not like he’s going to be using the utilities all that much. Comfort is not exactly his aim.

As he leaves, two couples are entering: a nervous man in a suit with a male prostitute in glorious drag and a Chinese girl, probably underage, being guided by a stone-faced Japanese man. Spencer smiles to himself. He’s not going to stand out here.

 

  
_I’m proud of you, Spencer.  
-Diana Reid, “The Instincts”_   


 

Spencer goes home and writes a letter to his mother. _Today I’m resting from my adventures. Looking for a princess to rescue. Let me know if you find any._

 _I miss you. I’m glad you called the other day. You were right, of course. As always._


	6. Flashback: Dolores

  
_So you said a lot of them kill prostitutes?  
That’s the number one serial killer target, actually.  
So is that for sex or because they think they’re dirty and need to be punished?  
-Spencer Reid and Nathan Harris, “Sex, Birth, Death”_   


 

This time he doesn’t look for a junkie. Sure, it would be interesting to hear her scream and beg as she goes through withdrawal, but chances are she’ll puke all over the place, and he doesn’t want to have to clean that up.

He wants his little concrete bunker to stay pristine. Except for the blood.

So it takes him a little longer to find the right one this time. But that’s okay. He’s focused on the hunt; it keeps his mind from getting too distracted. He helps solve a child murder, then returns to DC and finds his next victim.

She’s older. She’s sassy. She laughs at him when he asks if he wants to come back to his place with her. She’s perfect.

He offers enough money that she can’t refuse. She’s not a junkie (he knows one when he sees one) but who couldn’t use the cash? She follows him, and when he holds the door to his cage open with a gallant gesture, she laughs and walks right in.

He slams the door behind them. He locks it. She starts to scream, seeing the room, the four concrete walls, the bed with a thin, dirty (trash-picked) mattress, the handcuffs on the walls.

Now it’s his turn to laugh.

She runs at him, screaming, her hands extended like claws. He grabs her wrists easily. She’s older, but he’s taller, and the hand is, after all, faster than the eye. She fights him hard while he drags her over to the wall and locks each arm in the cuffs, behind her back so she faces the room.

“Don’t stop,” he whispers in her ear. “I like it when you fight.”

She screams again, incoherent with rage, and kicks at him. He jumps back, laughing, then goes to his cooler and grabs a bottle of water.

He sits on the bed and sips his water, watching her until she wears herself out with screaming and trying to get out of the cuffs. She keeps glaring at him even as she takes huge, heaving breaths, sagging awkwardly against the wall.

He walks up to her, holding the half-empty water bottle. He brings the bottle close to her lips, but not close enough that she can reach it herself. “Want some water?”

She spits at him. But there’s no liquid in her mouth to even make it close to meaningful. He grabs her jaw, hard enough to hopefully bruise, with his left hand and tilts her face back, then dribbles some water into her mouth. “Go on. Drink it. Don’t you want to stay healthy?”

She gulps some of it then spits it back at him. He manages not to flinch. “What do you want, you bastard?” she asks, her voice ragged.

“Oh, I’ve already got it.” He forces her chin up again and pours more water into her mouth. “If you’re a good girl, it won’t even hurt too much.”

She spits it back out again. He grins. “Well, that’s okay. I’d rather hurt you anyway.”

He doesn’t bother with any preliminaries, not even taking off her shirt: he just pushes her skirt up, rips off her underwear, undoes his pants and fucks her right up against the wall. She manages to bite him on the arm. In retaliation, he hits her hard in the face, raising a red mark and banging the back of her head against the wall. She yelps and then goes silent.

When he’s finished, he picks up the water bottle again and offers it to her. She just glares. He drains the rest of the bottle, tosses the empty into the corner, then walks to the cooler. He glances back ostentatiously to make sure she’s watching him. (He already knew she was.) He opens the lid so she can see the case of bottled water inside, then slams it shut and returns, silently, to tug on her chain.

He does himself up again and heads for the door, taking out his key, then stops as though he’s forgotten something. He turns to her and smiles. “I’ll be back. If you’ve learned your lesson, maybe you’ll get some water.”

She still doesn’t respond. He lets himself out and takes the bus home, happy, content, exhilarated.

He should have set up a camera. It would be interesting to watch her try to get the water, see if she tries to detach her chains from the wall or rest on the bed. She might not even be able to sit down. But a camera might be too much of a risk; it might be traceable. He doesn’t like technology.

He sleeps well that night.

 

  
_The problem is that people aren’t looking for them because they don’t know they’re missing.  
-Aaron Hotchner, “The Last Word”_   


 

When he returns, she’s broken, but just a little. He likes it that way. She says “please” when he offers water again, and he gives it to her, along with a sandwich from a corner store. He feeds it to her bite by bite. Her arms are still chained to the wall behind her.

This time before he leaves he unlocks one of her hands from the cuffs and kicks the cooler closer to her—close enough that she can reach it if she strains. He has work in the morning, and if they have to fly off somewhere, he needs to make sure she doesn’t die without him there.

He is able to come back the next day, though, bringing lots more food. He doesn’t want her to lose too much more weight. This time she’s pliable enough that he can bring her over to the bed and lock her there.

He experiments with her. Experiments in deprivation, experiments in pain. It’s best when she screams, high and thin, and the sound echoes back to him from the walls, reassuring him that no one else can hear what he’s doing.

He keeps her for almost a year before he gets tired of her.


	7. Dennehy

_We’re not statistics, Spencer.  
-William Reid, “Revelations”_

 

Everyone seems to think working at the BAU is all glamour, kicking down doors and cutting down psychopaths. But actually, it’s mostly paperwork. Just like any other government job, really. Paperwork, continuing education, staff meetings, and coffee.

It takes a week of paperwork, continuing education, and staff meetings, not to mention more coffee than Spencer cares to count, before the glamour comes back. They’re called out for a kidnapping in Massachusetts. The cops are skeptical that it’s a kidnapping—the girl is sixteen and not exactly a model student—but they dutifully notify the FBI as soon as they know what’s going on, and JJ shows the ransom note to the team. They’re unanimous: this warrants a call-out.

Spencer is, privately, frustrated, despite the relatively high chance of recovery in this kidnapping (by the time they get there, she will have been missing only nine hours) and the intriguing puzzle of the note. He’s been hunting every day for a week. He hasn’t found his next victim yet.

It can’t possibly be that he’s exhausted the city’s resources of Hispanic prostitutes with challenging smirks. He can’t believe that. He’ll just have to keep looking. Try a new neighborhood. It doesn’t matter if she’s confused when he takes her on the bus. She won’t have the opportunity to tell anyone.

But now he’s stuck, and it makes him itch.

Let them think he’s having drug cravings again. He rubs at his arms and doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes. If they think it’s the Dilaudid (and in part it is, of course—if there was a needle in his veins, he wouldn’t be thinking about blood, wouldn’t be missing the feel of a knife in his hands and the sound of a high-pitched scream), they won’t say anything. There is, of course, he thinks ironically, a moratorium on inter-team profiling.

 

_I know what it’s like to be afraid of your own mind.  
-Spencer Reid, “Sex, Birth, Death”_

 

On the jet, Spencer takes over one of the tables, spreading out the copy of the ransom note, a photograph of the victim, and several pieces of blank paper. He shuts out the sounds of the others talking the case over.

The unsub has left him a puzzle. It doesn’t matter that it’s addressed to the kidnapped girl’s father, that it’s probably really meant for the Massachusetts police; it’s a puzzle for him to solve. There’s more here than meets the eye. More, that is, than meets any eye but his.

He is feeling a little better by the time they touch down. He’s given his mind some exercise, and he’s focused on something different from his two unhealthy urges. And he’s confident he’s worked one thing out, at least: the place where the unsub is holding the girl is hidden within the ransom note. Spencer might not have found that location yet, but he will.

Morgan bumps shoulders with him as they exit the jet. “Hey, kid. You okay?”

Spencer nods, looks down briefly, then up at Morgan, through the hair hanging down the side of his face. “Yeah, I’m fine. You know me, I love puzzles.”

Morgan doesn’t look convinced. “Hotch and I both tried to get your attention on the plane. You didn’t even look up.”

That makes Spencer worry. He tries to hide it. Did he really focus himself so hard as to not hear his teammate’s voices? He thinks back to the journey and can’t recall even hearing them after the first few minutes of settling. Then a second realization hits him, making guilt swoop through his stomach. He’s forgotten to text Elle, too. He forces a smile. “I guess I was just distracted by the puzzle. This guy actually has the high intelligence he believes he has for once. I had to give it all my attention.”

This time Morgan grins and nods at him. “Don’t worry, Reid. You’re smarter.”

He forces a little laugh. “I hope so. One day I’m going to meet my match.” Not that he really believes that. The only person he’s ever met who’s as smart as him is his mother. And most of that fearsome brain is taken up with delusion and medication. He loves her, but the last thing in the world he wants is to be like her.

“What was it you wanted to tell me?” he asks, dragging his mind back to the issue at hand as they get into the back of an SUV to head to the police station.

“Well, first we just wanted to see how you were doing on the puzzle. Then Garcia came up with a list of possibles. Maybe you can narrow it down. We’ve got a few professors on the list.”

Spencer shakes his head automatically. “Our unsub isn’t a professor. If he was, someone would recognize his intelligence. He has a desperate need to show me how smart he is.”

Morgan gives him an odd look, his eyebrows scrunched together. “Show us, you mean.”

“Right. Exactly.” Spencer pulls out his cell phone to text Elle. He can at least get rid of one of his distractions.

 

_He wouldn’t get it wrong unless it was on purpose.  
-Aaron Hotchner, “Revelations”_

 

He takes the list of possibles Morgan has written down as they walk into the police station, mentally crossing off a few—the professors, the people with prestigious jobs. Of course, in a case like this it was difficult to rule anybody out. There was only one victim and no bodies. Still… Spencer is confident he can catch the man.

JJ makes the introductions and they are ushered into a tiny conference room. One wall has a grouping of pictures of the victim and the crime scene. Spencer makes a full turn and grabs the detective by the shoulder. “Excuse me. Can I get a map of the area?”

The man steps away, startled, but nods. “Of course.”

Spencer sits down with the note again. There is a cipher here. Two paragraphs of straightforward-seeming, English ransom note, and then three of apparently random letters. Of course, they only seem straightforward and random to those whose eyes were not trained to read such things. Some of the language in the ransom note is odd, and it doesn’t make the usual demands. Spencer is sure there is a secret message hidden inside the note.

He barely looks up when the map—an unfortunately small one—is brought to him, simply taking it and scanning the names quickly. Nothing yet looks familiar. He has to go back to the note.

He’s already tried the usual cipher-breaking techniques. Most likely this kidnapper, like the Zodiac killer, used deliberate misspellings to hide what he’d written. (Two comparisons to the Zodiac in less than that many weeks. If Spencer were a superstitious man, he would wonder if that meant something.) But they don’t have the time to publish this ransom note and hope that some hobbyist will crack it. They depend on Spencer’s mind and his alone.

JJ brings him a cup of coffee. He’s halfway through it when he finds a connection and jumps out of his seat, nearly spilling the cup. “Markill Creek.” His finger stabs down, marking the spot on the map where the words are written in tiny, blue type.

“Markill Creek? What about it?” The detective stares at him.

“I think that’s where he’s holding her. It’s in the cipher. I should be able to work the rest of this out from there…”

“Can we search the creek?” Hotch asks, already standing up, pulling his coat on and getting his gun settled.

“Yes. Of course. Yes, we can. Are you sure about this?”

“I’m sure it’s in here.” Something doesn’t seem right. But it’s a lead. The others rush out, calling for search dogs, floodlights. When did it get dark? It doesn’t matter. JJ and a few cops are the only ones left with him, but he still has his cipher.

He works out the code and shakes his head at it, then looks up at JJ, who’s actually read the case file. “Does the name Laurine mean anything to you?” It’s the cipher’s key, but it’s not anything on the map.

“No… wait. I think there was something about a Laurine in here.” She delves into the file, flipping through the pages, her pink lips moving slightly as she scans. Spencer waits impatiently. He feels like the wheels of his mind are spinning until he can get past this obstacle.

“Yes, there it is. Laurine was Angela’s mother’s name. She died when Angela was two. Oh, jeez, this is awful. Her dad disappeared later that year on a fishing trip—presumed drowned, since they found his boat. She was adopted by a cousin.”

“So, wait, is Masters not her original last name?”

She scans up and down again. “No. It was Dennehy.”

That doesn’t mean anything to him. He goes out into the main station, where a few men in uniform still wait, not part of the search. “Excuse me. Are any of you familiar with the victim’s family?”

Two guys look up, a skinny redhead with a mustache and an older man with silver-streaked hair. “Sure,” says the older man. “I mean, it’s a small town. Everyone knows the Masters.”

Spencer shakes his head. “I mean her birth family. The Dennehys.”

The redhead raises his eyebrows. “That doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“Oh, yeah, her dad wasn’t from around here,” says the older man. “Never really fit in. Masters was her mom’s maiden name. You won’t find any other Dennehys in Granville.”

“Is there anyone who knew her father well?”

The redhead shakes his head. The older man shrugs. A cold feeling settles into the pit of Spencer’s stomach as he returns to the conference room and grabs his cell phone. “Hotch? I think I screwed up.”

“You didn’t,” Hotch says. “We haven’t found her, but there’s another note. I’m sending Rossi back with it.”

Another note. So it wasn’t just misdirection. “Thanks.” While he waits, he tries the name “Dennehy” as a key. It doesn’t work. It would make a terrible key, anyway; it has two repeated letters. Maybe if he removes them…

When Rossi arrives, he quickly translates the new note (all in cipher) using the Laurine key and writes them out for the others to read. But he knows it’s not the real message. He downs the rest of his coffee and gets to work figuring it out.

 

_You’re not all that hard to profile.  
-Jason Gideon, “Jones”_

 

Hotch sends them all to the hotel before it’s even midnight. Of course, most of them have gotten physically worn out doing the search. JJ promises to get up early, catch up on the continuing search of Markill Creek, and do a morning press conference. Spencer wonders if he’s going to manage to get any sleep. At least his brain has been working hard.

He’s just kicked the door shut behind him when the phone in his bag buzzes. He flips it open with shaking hands. It’s a text from Elle. _sry, lover, just got into DC! If u get back here soon I might still be here!_

Elle. His heart thumps in his chest. Who knows how long she’ll be in the city. Who knows how much time he has.

He can’t sleep tonight. He carries the notes with him down to the hotel lobby and fills two cups with coffee and all the sugar the hotel seems to have. Then he takes it all back up to his hotel room and works.

Around four AM, he starts to have cravings. He shakes them off. He takes a shower, calls up memories of Margareta, Dolores, Eileen, but they all have Elle’s face and it doesn’t work. The only thing he can do is work, finish this so they can leave.

By the time breakfast opens and everyone is downstairs sucking down the not-too-disgusting hotel coffee, he has something for them.

“What is this, Reid?” Hotch asks, taking it.

“It’s a map.” Seeing Hotch’s mildly puzzled expression, he adds, “And it would take me almost as long to explain it as it did to figure it out, and we don’t have time for that.”

Rossi takes a look. “You think this is where the girl is?”

Spencer shrugs. Yes, he does, but he doesn’t want to seem too arrogant. “There’s something there. I’m sure of that.”

Hotch frowns at him. “Did you get any sleep last night, Reid?”

He looks down, shaking more sugar into his coffee. “I couldn’t get to sleep.” It’s the truth, but _couldn’t_ means something different than it sounds like.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Morgan asks, grabbing the map out of Hotch’s hands. “Let’s go.”

 

_Still haven’t found the father of the year award.  
-Spencer Reid, “Elephant’s Memory”_

 

Spencer stays behind at the police station on Hotch’s orders (presumably because of his lack of sleep). He spends the time going over and over the notes again, trying to make sure he didn’t miss anything. He tries, too, not to get too anxious about waiting for the others to return. The destination is hard to get to. The unsub was counting on that.

He tries to get JJ to check his notes, too, but she can’t make any sense of them. He resorts to pacing.

Finally, he gets a call on his cell. He tries not to be too disappointed that it doesn’t say Elle. “Reid.”

“Finally, some reception. Your map was right, kid.” It’s Rossi. “We’ve got her.”

“She’s safe?” He doesn’t hide the excitement and relief in his voice.

“She sure is. A little dehydrated, but she’ll be fine soon. We’re at the hospital.”

“What about the unsub?”

“He wasn’t there. We haven’t located him yet. Hotch and Morgan are still looking.”

His heart plummets into his stomach. There’s still more. How long will Elle be in DC? He needs to get there before she leaves, before she checks in with FLETC…

“Is she unconscious? Can’t she tell you anything about him?”

“She keeps saying it’s her dad.”

“Her father is dead.”

“Exactly.” Rossi sighs. “Probably some kind of Stockholm syndrome. Maybe he made her call him ‘dad.’”

“That’s certainly possible.” It doesn’t seem right, though. “I’m going to look over the notes again…”

“Give your brain a rest. He can’t have gotten far. Hotch and Morgan will catch him.”

He shakes his head, even though Rossi can’t see him. “I think I’m missing something about his identity. I’ll find it.”

“Yeah, I know you will, kid. Okay. Do what you need to do. Prentiss and I will be at the hospital.”

He nods and hangs up, then goes to stare at his notes again. After a minute, he realizes someone is speaking to him. He looks up. “Hey,” says JJ. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” He shakes his head. “I just think I’m missing something.”

She stares at him so hard it makes him uncomfortable. She’s too perceptive for her own good. “It’s a puzzle,” he says with a smile, hoping he can convince her that’s all it is. “You know I can’t let this guy beat me.”

She smiles back. “You won’t, Spence. Don’t worry. She wasn’t where you thought she was?”

“Oh! No, they found her. But they didn’t find the unsub. And she’s saying it’s her father.”

“Her dead father.”

“Right. So I’m pretty sure I’m missing something.”

She sighs and shakes her head. “Wish I could help. You can bounce ideas off me if you want.”

“Thanks. How did you say the father died?”

She checks the file. “Presumed drowned. Spence, you don’t think…”

“I have to call Rossi back.” Yes, he does think. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d assumed someone was dead who wasn’t. Never assume. Not because it makes an ass out of anybody. But because the only things you can trust are facts.

“Rossi. What was the building like that they found the girl in?”

“Sorry, this is Prentiss. Rossi went in to talk to her again. What was your question?”

He repeats it, impatient. She hums thoughtfully. “It was just a little shack. Looked handmade. Weird thing to find out in the middle of the woods.”

“Were there any paths around it? Deer tracks, anything?”

“Not that we could find. The woods are pretty thick up there, but not too thick to move through.”

“So where are Morgan and Hotch looking?”

“And the rest of the cops. Just out in a circle from the shack. He can’t have gotten all that far.”

“But he knows the woods better than anyone.”

“Some of the cops here know the woods really well.”

Spencer shakes his head. “Did they check under the shack?”

“What do you mean, under?”

“Underground. Like a trapdoor, anything like that.”

“No… no, I don’t think so. That’s good thinking, Reid. I can get word out to the rest of them.” She hangs up.

JJ is staring at him again. “Why underground?”

“It makes sense. He’d have to have somewhere to live. If he’s been out there all those years…”

Her eyes widen with understanding. “He’d have to have a building. But they would have found a building by now.”

“Right. So it has to be underground.”

She nods. “Seriously… are you okay? You seem… kind of distracted, but the opposite of distracted at the same time.”

Damn her, she’s the best profiler of all of them, sometimes. He’ll have to think of something. “Can I tell you a secret?”

She grins, part childish delight, part triumph. “Of course. You know you can tell me anything.”

“I’m seeing someone.”

Her grin widens even more. “That’s fantastic! What’s her name?”

“Eileen.” It’s the first name that comes to mind that isn’t the truth. “She’s a cop, so she’s busy all the time too, but she’s free this weekend, so I just want to get back and see her.”

“Aww, that’s sweet. Our genius is all grown up.”

He nods and smiles awkwardly. “I’m not really ready to tell the rest of the team yet.”

“Hey, I understand.” JJ laughs a little. “I mean, of all people.”

He grins teasingly at her. “Yeah, but I kept it a secret better.”

“What do you mean?”

“We all knew you were dating Will.”

She sighs and rolls her eyes, but she’s still smiling. “Damn profilers.”

 

_I’m proud of you.  
-Jason Gideon, “LDSK”_

 

He paces, goes over his notes over and over again, and worries for another hour. He still can’t find anything new. He’s still afraid he’s missed something.

But then there’s shouting and cheering, and he and JJ go to the front of their little conference room to see Morgan and a burly cop with firm grips on each arm of a man trying his best to get away from them. His beard and hair are long and ragged, his clothes filthy, his teeth rotten.

Spencer steps out of the conference room. “Mr. Dennehy.”

The man laughs. “So you’re the genius,” he rasps.

Spencer nods. “How did you get hold of the paper?”

“Public library. They let all kinds of vagrants like me use the computers for free.” He laughs again. “Have fun with my codes?”

Spencer shrugs. “They weren’t all that interesting, actually.” He smirks at JJ, turning his back on Dennehy, communicating: you’re not worth my time.

Someone walks up behind him. He doesn’t turn until he feels a hand clasp his shoulder. It’s Hotch. He has dark smudges under his eyes but he’s smiling. “You were right, Reid. As usual. And we didn’t even have to fire a single shot.”

“I think you can sleep now,” says JJ.


	8. Flashback: Elle

_Um, Reid, you probably saved my life in there…  
Probably? I totally saved your life. And I’m pretty certain that it was caught on tape.  
-Elle Greenaway and Spencer Reid, “Derailed”_

 

Things change when he saves her life. Even though that wasn’t his intention. Even though it wasn’t in his mind at all.

He was just doing his job. Doing one of the many things that only he could do. He would have done the same whoever was on or off that train, if they had all been strangers or if it had been the entire team.

He tries to tell her that. She says, “That’s what heroes always say,” and seals off his protests with a hard kiss.

She’s almost a foot shorter than him, and so slender, but she’s all made of hard muscle and sharp bone and he has nothing but the latter. She drags him to her bed. Not that he’s protesting. Body and mind are in agreement for what feels like the first time since undergrad.

She throws him down, tears his clothes off, and he tries to help, manages to get her pants unbuttoned, but mostly she’s moving way faster than he can and he just gives up and lets her take control.

That’s the last time he does that. The next morning after breakfast he tries to take charge, and she lets him wrap his hands around her hips and push her to the bed, but then she grabs him by the hair and pulls his face down. He doesn’t give in so easily this time.

It’s always a fight with them. Neither wants to give up control. And Spencer wouldn’t have it any other way.

Isn’t that what he likes about Elle, after all? Her fierceness, her strength, her incredible tenacity. Her smile like nothing scares her, because nothing ever does.

He doesn’t know what she likes about him. He prefers not to dwell on it.

They keep it quiet. There are rules about fraternization, even if neither of them expects to have any trouble about it, but it’s better not to risk it. And the rest of the team knows them too well. Elle says, “We all have to keep a few secrets. Let’s let this be just for us.”

Spencer just nods. He’s still keeping his secrets.

Anyway, it’s not a real relationship, not as he understands the term. It’s mostly just a lot of sex. And sometimes they eat together. But they never hold each other—she falls asleep before he does, most nights—and they hardly talk. When they do, it’s about serial killers, mostly. And they fight, sometimes about the serial killers, sometimes about the job, sometimes about stupid things like his dirty socks or her dirty dishes. But the fighting usually just leads to more sex. Because that’s who they are together, Spencer and Elle.

 

_Then here’s to winning.  
-Elle Greenaway, “The Aftermath”_

 

She waits until they’re home to start the screaming fight about Lila. He knew it was coming from the way she said “You’re welcome,” the way she hasn’t spoken to him since. He’s grateful she waited until the rest of the team can’t hear them, anyway.

He offers up excuses: Lila started it, he had to protect her, they’d agreed they weren’t exclusive, it was just for sex. He knows it’s all bullshit. Whatever Elle might have said they both know it’s much more than that, even if it weren’t for the trust they have to have as part of the same team, even if it weren’t for the fact that neither of them has looked at someone else since this started. Not until now.

She throws dishes but doesn’t hit him, so he thinks it’s okay, until she lapses into Spanish and he pushes her against the wall and kisses her roughly.

She pushes him away.

He’s so surprised he actually stumbles back, despite how much he wants to hold her still, control her, kiss her, fuck her. “Elle?”

“We’re through.” She shoves him again and stalks past him to her door. She flings it open and gestures to the hallway with an open hand. “Get out of my apartment, SSA Doctor Reid.”

Numb, confused, he does. Before he leaves he looks back. She’s still standing in the doorway, her shirt half-unbuttoned, glaring at him. The hurt in her eyes almost makes him turn back. But he keeps going, leaves her behind, vowing to himself that someday he’ll fix things. He’ll put them back the way they’re supposed to be.

She’ll be his.

 

_That’s impossible. A sexual sadist can’t feel love.  
-Spencer Reid, “No Way Out”_

 

He almost manages to sacrifice himself to the man who tried to kill her. But the adventure ends the right way: the villain dies, the girl is saved, the Grail is found.

When he gets back from taking his mom home, he goes to visit Elle in the hospital. She pretends to be asleep. He considers telling her he knows, but he’ll let her have her space. That’s what she craves right now. Later. Later he’ll talk to her.

It’s incredibly awkward when she comes back. They resort to talking about haircuts. Then Hotch puts them together and Spencer thinks, _he doesn’t know_ , and then he thinks, _he does know_. Then Elle says, “I’m all yours, Dr. Reid,” and his mind takes a different route.

He’s distracted. She can tell. But when he tries to go home with her, she says, “Sorry, _chico_ , but I meant it. Not going to happen.”

She might have meant it then. But she doesn’t mean it now. He’ll let her think she’s winning, but only for a little while. Because he wants her, and if she thinks she’s winning, she’ll come back to him faster. He knows her.

It’s all mind games, and his mind is better.

 

_I could feel his hand in there. And sometimes it’s like I can still feel it.  
-Elle Greenaway, “The Aftermath”_

 

Finally, in the hotel room in Ohio, he makes her talk to him. (The neatly-packaged hotel alcohol helps.) And they’ve never been about talking, but maybe that’s what lets her talk to him when she won’t talk to anyone else. He understands her fear—a man who has such terrible things lurking in his own mind knows what fear is like—and he tries to reassure her and, eventually, she opens her shirt and lets him see her scar.

He gets down on his knees, gazes at it, strokes it with his fingers, kisses it gently. She laughs and pushes him away, but he’s serious. “It’s beautiful. Look at it, Elle, it just shows how strong you are. Who else would have had the strength to keep themselves alive after this?”

She shakes her head. (He doesn’t actually like her new haircut. The color is wrong.) He persists. “Here, feel it.” He grabs her hand and presses it against the scar, holding his own, bigger hand over hers, so she can’t move it away. They can both feel her heart beating underneath. “See?” He can’t help smiling. “You’re alive. He’s not. You beat him. It’s your body. No one else can get inside it.”

She says “Not for long,” and grabs his collar with her free hand and pulls him in for a kiss, and they’re both smiling as their lips press hungrily together because they both know he set that line up.

They don’t actually make it to the bed, just fuck right there on the floor. He lets her stay on top because he wants her healthy, not broken (or so he keeps trying to tell himself). She rides him for all he’s worth and afterward she’s smiling and relaxed and he thinks things are going to be back to normal.

Then she kills the suspect in cold blood (he knows her, knows the profile, and this man was not carrying a gun). And Spencer feels, inexplicably, betrayed. But when she leaves the team, skips her therapy session and rabbits off, he’s not surprised or hurt. It’s what she needs to do, to have her freedom. Anyway, she texts him when she gets the job with FLETC, and he understands that there’s going to be a new normal, and that’s not a bad thing.


	9. Elle

  
_It’s about Elle, isn’t it?  
-Spencer Reid, “The Boogeyman”_   


 

Spencer waits for the plane to be in the air enough that the seatbelt sign turns off—not that the BAU ever pays much attention to what you’re supposed to do on the plane, but he doesn’t want to seem in as much of a hurry as he actually is—and gives JJ a little, secretive smile before going into the bathroom with his cell phone.

He splashes his face with water first, grimacing at himself in the mirror. He looks as exhausted as he doesn’t actually feel. Well, he’ll sleep on the plane. It will be good to be refreshed for Elle. Especially with his big plans.

He holds his breath for a moment, making sure there are no tiny sounds outside the bathroom of someone else waiting to come in, then flicks his phone open and dials.

“Reid!” Elle answers breathlessly before the first ring has quite ended. “I was almost afraid I wouldn’t hear from you. Did you catch your unsub?”

“We did,” he says, letting his smile and his relief creep into his voice. “Actually, it was a completely successful case. No one died.”

She laughs. “How rare that is. So, I’m done with my training session and my flight isn’t until tomorrow. I’ll be seeing you tonight, right?”

“Definitely. We should be touching down in a couple of hours.”

“Great. Because I will tell you I am fucking horny and I think I’ve waited long enough.”

He closes his eyes and leans against the wall of the tiny airplane bathroom. “Me too, Elle.”

 

  
_I don’t really know what I am.  
-Spencer Reid, “Elephant’s Memory”_   


 

He sleeps so heavily on the plane that he doesn’t wake up until JJ touches his shoulder, which snaps him up and looking wildly around. She backs up hastily, holding her hands flat. “Sorry, Spence. We’ve landed.”

He sits up, rubs his eyes, looks around. “I’m sorry, JJ. Dreaming, I guess.”

“I’d tell you to go home and get to sleep, but…” She smiles.

He nods. “You get some sleep. Say hi to Henry for me.”

“Will do.” They both leave the plane, heading in different directions. He’s a little shaky walking to the subway—it’s all the caffeine, no sleep, and no food. But he can fix those.

He takes a seat alone near the back of a car and calls Elle. “Hey there, mamacita.”

She laughs. “You sound even more dorky than usual when you try to speak Spanish.”

“I know. I do it to please you. I’m heading into the city. You up for dinner?”

“Starved. Chinese okay with you?”

“As long as they have forks there.”

“My recon says they do. Golden Empress Garden on K street.”

“I’ll see you there.”

He hangs up and reaches into his pocket, counting his keys. Apartment key. Gun safe key. Liquor cabinet key. Car key. Cage key.

“You look stunning,” he tells Elle when he sees her, because it’s true. She’s wearing a satiny black dress that clings to every curve. “That can’t be what you wear to work in.”

She grins and shakes her head. “I packed it just for you.”

“No, you didn’t. You wore it to go out.”

She pinches his ass covertly as the waiter leads them to their table. “Well, I’m out now.”

“And I appreciate it.” He sees her watching the waiter, the rest of the diners; hypervigilant as always, watching for the world’s next move. But she’s not looking for it from him.

Conversation drifts to work over the food, as usual; she tells an amusing anecdote about one of her trainees who was having a lot of trouble with his weapon (the way she says “weapon” makes him him almost choke on his duck) and he explains to her about the ridiculous cipher and the father kidnapping his own daughter. The way she smiles at him when he describes how he solved it makes his cock twitch.

They linger over dessert. It’s growing dark out the restaurant’s windows. He watches her lick chocolate off her spoon and says abruptly, “Do you want to see my new apartment?”

She grins behind the spoon, her eyes shining. “I thought you’d never ask, Doctor Reid.”

 

  
_Reid, do not ever go away again.  
-Elle Greenaway, “The Fisher King, Part I”_   


 

They get in Elle’s rental to get back to the cage. Her eyebrows rise as he gives her directions. “That’s a pretty crappy part of town.”

“It’s cheap,” he says, putting discomfort in his voice. “My government salary barely pays my bills as it is, let alone my mom’s.”

She shakes her head, maneuvering the SUV through crowded streets. “Can’t you get any kind of assistance for that?”

“I get a little. But you know, I have a full-time job, they think I can handle it. It would probably help if I learned to cook so I could stop eating out all the time.”

“Or if you took one of those think-tank invitations or professorships you’re always getting.”

“Yeah.” He lets the subject drop there, gazing out the window at the more-familiar streets. They’ve had this discussion before. He loves this job too much to take one that pays better. He hasn’t told her all the reasons he loves it—keeping his secret in close proximity with the very people who should be able to deduce it, occasionally feeling like he’s meeting a kindred spirit—but at least she can empathize with loving the travel and the opportunity to take down the nastiest of nasties.

She parks in the dirty lot by the apartment building. No one gives them a second look as he takes her in and leads her up the steps. His heart is hammering in his chest. “Quiet up here,” is her only comment as they reach the top floor.

“Yeah, the apartment itself isn’t so bad. And the stairs are certainly good exercise.” He holds the door open for her, then locks it carefully behind them and drops his keys on a small table. He turns to her with a smile. “Not to mention that the neighbors are not going to complain about any noises up here.”

Elle’s laugh is low and rough and her grin is feral. “Maybe it’s a nice place after all.” She lunges forward at him, barely giving him any warning, and grabs him by the collar to kiss him like a hungry snake.

He grabs her, kissing back, and pulls her close against him so he can feel every little curve of her perfect body. He pushes the straps of her dress off her shoulders. She grabs the hem of his sweater vest and pulls it up. He kicks off his shoes and turns, pulling her toward the bed.

As they continue to strip each other he relaxes, letting her push him down, letting her think she’s in charge. Biding his time. He’s throbbing with desire and his hair is already damp with sweat.

Then she lifts away from him to pull off her panties, the last scrap of fabric between them. He watches appreciatively and waits for her to bend over again. When she does, he grabs her arms and twists, pulling her underneath him, pinning her to the bed. They both laugh, breathlessly.

Then he reaches for the handcuffs he’s stashed on the headboard and locks her wrists to the bed.

She gasps when she feels the cold metal against her wrists, then laughs again, higher-pitched, as she tugs at the cuffs and feels very little give. “You think you’ve won, don’t you, Spencer?”

He grins down at her and lowers his head to nuzzle her cheek. “Oh, I know I’ve won.” He bites her ear, darts his tongue out to swirl inside it.

“Fine,” she says between gasping breaths. She presses against him as he roughly palms her breast. “I guess it is your turn, anyway.”

“You like it, don’t you?” He pushes her knees apart, sticks two fingers into her dripping-wet cunt. “I’ll be doing all the work. All you have to do is lay there and let me do whatever I want to you.”

Her hips buck. “Shut up and fuck me.”

“Whatever my lady demands.” He adjusts his position, sucks a nipple, and plunges into her, immediately losing his grasp on words. It’s hot and wet and intense, and he doesn’t even have the brainpower to translate the Spanish she’s babbling.

It’s very, very good. After all, it’s Elle. But he knows it’s going to get better.

He makes sure she comes before he does, then rolls off her and lays panting on the thin bed next to her. She moans a little, shifts position, then laughs and rattles the cuffs on her wrists. “I think you can let me go now, Reid.”

He lifts up on one elbow, resting his head in his hand, and smiles at her. “I don’t agree.”

She pushes her eyebrows up, a perplexed look, then purses her lips. “You were right, okay? I did like it. But now that the sex is over it’s not as much fun. My arms are getting tired.”

“I’ll help you sit up.” He matches action to word, lifting her slender torso so that she’s resting more against the headboard. “That’s more comfortable, isn’t it?”

“Sure.” She shakes her head and looks over at her right hand, then frowns. “Reid! What… what the hell?” She jangles the cuff again. Now she can see the way the other half is threaded through a hole in the headboard. The way she’s locked up permanently. She looks over at the other one, whipping her hair with the speed of her movement. It’s threaded the same way.

He strokes her cheek with one finger. “You might not be a profiler anymore, Elle, but I think you can figure out what’s going on.”

She shakes her head, staring at him. But he can see it in her eyes: she knows. She just doesn’t want to accept it.

 

  
_There are only two ways to get immediate cooperation without the use of force. There’s either the threat of force or a previously established relationship.  
-Spencer Reid, “North Mammon”_   


 

He leaves her that night, cuffed naked to the bed, though he drapes a sheet partly over her so she can kick it into a better position if she wants. She screams, high and thin, as he unlocks the door, but there’s no reaction. He doesn’t even hear any sounds from other apartments as he leaves. In this neighborhood no one wants to interfere with anyone else’s business.

He’s taken her clothes and her keys, and drives her rental across town, leaving it in a parking lot at a busy, noisy club. He wears gloves the whole time and notes the position of the seat so he can slide it back into place as though Elle has been the one driving. The keys he holds onto. The clothes he sinks in the Anacostia.

Then he goes home and sleeps all night.

In the morning it’s work as usual. Paperwork to do with the Masters case. He wants to write out how he solved the cipher, for posterity, but there’s nothing about that on the forms. He can put it in his report. He may have lied to the unsub about the complexity (because that man did not deserve to know that he was intelligent) but somebody besides JJ ought to know the truth.

JJ corners him in the break room as he’s getting a third cup of sugary coffee. “So? Did you get to see her?”

An image of Elle writhing, pinned to the bed, flashes into his mind, and a smile comes unbidden to his lips. “Yeah, I did. It, uh, went really well.”

She grins and punches him lightly on the shoulder. “That’s great. Good for you. Can’t wait to meet her.”

He laughs and shakes his head. “Maybe.”

“I know you, Spence. Can’t keep a secret for long. Besides, Morgan’s going to have a fit.” She winks, gets her tea, and leaves.

He watches her go, happy. Not all of his secrets are on display.

 

  
_Why do you choose to do a job that’s so dangerous? You should find a man to take care of you.  
-William Lee, “The Aftermath”_   


 

Elle is waiting, of course, when Spencer returns to the apartment that evening, though there are scratches in the wood around the handcuffs that indicate she’s been trying to get free. He shakes his head at her, walking over to the bed. She watches him through half-lidded eyes as he sets down a shopping bag next to the bed and bends over to inspect the scratches.

“You’ve been trying to escape,” he says in a low, soft voice. “I don’t like that. This is where you belong, okay?”

He grabs her by the chin and kisses her forcefully on the mouth. She tears her head away. He slaps her and kisses her again. This time she doesn’t react.

He sits on the edge of the bed and opens one of the bags inside his shopping bag, allowing the spicy aroma of Thai food to waft out. He lifts out several small containers and rests them carefully on the radiator in front of him. “If you promise not to fight me,” he says, not looking at Elle, “I’ll unlock one of your hands so you can eat, okay?”

“Okay.” Her voice is thin and raspy. She’s probably been trying to scream.

“So do you?”

“Do I what?”

“You know what I want.”

She swallows audibly. “I promise.”

“Good.” He turns and gently takes her right hand in his, slipping a bobby pin out of his sleeve. It’s been a long time since he bothered to carry handcuff keys. A bit of wiggling, and her wrist is free.

She turns away from him to sit on the edge of the bed, lifts her right hand to her left to rub the wrist, and takes a huge breath. He cracks open the pad thai and hands it to her with a fork.

They eat in silence. She scrapes the last bits of noodles and cilantro out of the plastic containers, slurping them hungrily. When the food is gone, he moves to sit next to her. “Are you all right?”

She turns her head slowly, letting her hair fall to veil her face. “What difference does it make?”

He tucks the the hair behind her ear so he can see her face. She’s not at all bruised from where he hit her yesterday. She’s tough and resilient, as slender and frail as she might look. It’s deceptive. That’s what he’s always liked about her, he thinks. “I care about you, Elle.”

“I used to think that.”

“Elle.” He puts one hand on the side of her neck and draws her close. “Aren’t you glad you finally get to see the real me?”

“This isn’t you, Spencer! This is—I don’t fucking know!” Without warning, she shoves his hand away, then flails at his face. One of her nails catches on his cheek and leaves a long scrape. He hisses with pain, grabbing her wrist and slamming her arm across the headboard. This time it should bruise. Panting with anger and the sudden exertion, he locks her right wrist back in its handcuff.

“You broke your promise.” He stands over her. His face feels tight with a scowl.

She glares at him. Her chest is heaving, her nipples tight and dark against her skin. “What are you going to do about it? I’m already locked up here.”

He unbuckles his belt, pulls it off, folds it up in his hand. Then he sits on the end of the bed and takes her foot in his hand.

Her screams make him shudder. But he keeps beating her until they stop. She’s fainted.

He leaves her there, unconscious, the smell of food still in the air. He’s not content.


	10. Missing

  
_Time to confess, Spencer Reid.  
-Tobias/Charles Hankel, “Revelations”_   


 

At work the next day Emily is the one to notice the scratch on Spencer’s cheek. She frowns at him. “What happened to you?”

He reaches up to touch it as though he’s forgotten about it. He hasn’t, of course; he’s been hyper-aware of it since he left Elle. It’s just a slim scrape, barely even bloody, but it’s out of the ordinary, so he’s cleaned and sealed it overnight with a bandage in hopes it would fade. When it didn’t, he had to come up with a story. “I’ve been thinking about getting a cat. I went to a shelter yesterday, and, well…” He shrugs and grimaces. “Maybe I’m not a cat person.”

“Oh, that’s ridiculous, of course you’re a cat person,” Emily says, barely preventing her laughter from bubbling up. “I would think cats would love you. That cat was just showing you how tough he is.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t really have time for a cat anyway.”

“Cats don’t need that much attention. I have a friend come in to feed Sergio once a day while I’m out and he’s fine. I think it would be good for you.”

“Yeah?” He frowns and wrinkles his forehead. “Why, do I seem lonely?”

Morgan laughs, coming up behind Spencer, and claps him on a back. “Kid, what you need is not a cat, it’s a girl.”

“But a cat could help him get a girl,” Emily points out mischievously.

“I’m fine, Morgan, really,” he protests, a deliberate stammer in his voice. JJ is watching from up in the balcony. She gives him a wink when Morgan and Prentiss aren’t looking.

 

  
_It was always about you.  
-Diana Reid, “Memoriam”_   


 

Spencer goes past the club where he left Elle’s rental on his way home. It’s closed now, and the parking lot is empty, except for a couple of flashy cars that must belong to employees and Elle’s dark SUV, looking lonely and dusty in the middle of the lot.

 

  
_It helps if they think you’re crazy. They don’t argue.  
-Diana Reid, “The Instincts”_   


 

He means to leave her alone for the night, let her worry and wonder, think about keeping her promises. But after checking the news a bit obsessively, putting on and turning off a Star Trek tape, and trying to write a letter to his mother only to realize his words aren’t going to make any sense to her, he gives up, pockets his favorite knife, and gets on the bus.

He picks up some groceries on his way to Elle, some water and yogurt—things to help keep her healthy. She’s already so thin. He doesn’t want her wasting away.

She’s asleep when he walks in, so he lets the door slam behind him. She jerks upright, biting back a cry of pain as her wrists jerk in the handcuffs. “Stay the fuck away from me,” she spits.

He ignores her. “I brought you some food. Sit up and I’ll feed you.” He uncaps the water and peels the lid off the yogurt, then brings them over to her. She turns her face away. “Aren’t you hungry?”

She has to be. She hasn’t eaten since last night. But she grits her teeth and keeps her face turned away from him. She has such iron strength. He pulls her face around and pours water into his mouth, gripping her chin hard enough, he thinks, to bruise.

He feeds her, spoonful by spoonful, like a baby, despite her attempts to spit the yogurt into his face. At one point he shoves her chin up to stop the yogurt from dripping out of her mouth and lets her choke.

When he’s scraped all the yogurt out of the container he offers her a bag of pretzels. She turns her face away again. He shrugs and sets it on the turned-off radiator, where she can see it but not reach it.

He sits there on the bed next to her, watching her hold her face in a tight, determined stare, as though she’s not bothered at all by what he’s doing, though he’s always known when Elle’s face is lying. This is interesting. He’s never wanted to actually converse with his victims before. Just frighten them. But he already knows Elle. And she’s already scared.

Maybe not scared enough, though. Maybe that’s what’s frustrating him.

He takes the knife out of his pocket and opens it quietly and out of her line of sight. “Elle,” he says softly. “You belong to me now. You understand that, right?”

She turns slowly to look at him. “I don’t—” Her eyes catch on the knife and she yelps. “Spencer. Please don’t. Don’t listen to them, okay?”

That discomfits him enough to set the knife down on the bed. “Listen to who?”

“The voices,” she whispers, eyes tracking the knife.

Spencer laughs and picks up the knife again. “You still don’t believe this is me, do you? I’ve always been this way, Elle. I’m just good at hiding it. You were a profiler. Does this really seem like schizophrenia to you?”

She presses her lips together and doesn’t answer.

He presses the knife to her throat, making her hiss in a breath. “I want you to understand. I want you to believe me.” He lowers his face to hers, whispers almost directly into her ear. “I want you to realize that you’re never going to escape.”

When he lifts his head again he sees that her eyes are squeezed shut, but she’s crying. He keeps the knife pressed to her skin but doesn’t cut her while he rapes her, then moves the bag of pretzels to the bed, where she can reach it if she strains.

 

  
_I don’t like the idea of you working on things that are so sad.  
-Diana Reid, “The Instincts”_   


 

He stays up late finishing what he’d started before he went to Elle, and consequently is tired at work the next day. At least the scratch has faded. But something else he’s been bracing for happens: the team has found out.

It’s their usual 10 AM briefing. JJ is stressed. Her hands are shaking just a tiny bit. “What’s the case?” Morgan asks.

“It’s not exactly a case,” she says, and clicks her remote. Elle’s smirking face is superimposed on the screen. Spencer puts the same expression of shock on his face as the rest of them.

“Elle?” Hotch says. “JJ, what’s going on?”

“She’s missing,” JJ explains, worry evident in her voice. “The police have nothing to go on so far, but they thought, we know her, we could put together a victimology report. It might help them.”

“Of course,” says Morgan immediately. “Anything we can do.”

“Rossi and I don’t know her,” Prentiss says, glancing over at the older profiler. “I’ve never even met her, though I knew of her.”

“I’ve never met her either,” Rossi agrees.

“You two can be our independent eyes,” says Hotch. He picks up a file folder from the table, frowns at it, and hands it over to Rossi. “You should take her file here and work up a victimology based on the actual information, not your personal knowledge. Then you can brief the rest of us. I’m not even sure what she’s been doing since she left the BAU; I know I haven’t kept in touch with her.”

“Have any of us?” JJ asks.

“I’ve talked to her a few times,” Spencer admits. “It had been a while, though.” Morgan gives him an eyebrows-raised look that he can’t decipher.

“Fine,” says Hotch. “JJ, I assume you’ve read the file.” JJ nods. “Prentiss and Rossi, you take the file. The rest of us will stay here and come up with what we can from Elle’s time at the BAU, then JJ and Reid can update us on her more recent activities. Then you two can come back and we’ll compare notes, see if there’s anything one group missed.”

Prentiss and Rossi agree and leave, and they get down to the discussion. There’s a lot to consider; Elle is not exactly a high-risk victim, and as Morgan and JJ agree, a kidnapper would have had to either be someone she knows or used overwhelming physical force and surprise to overpower her. Spencer doesn’t smile, but he does let his attention wander a little, under the level of his mind that he’s using to talk with the others. He remembers her salty tears and the goosebumps on her bare skin, as vivid as though she’s in front of him now.

He explains to the rest of them the job she’d taken with FLETC, and how she traveled as frequently as and even less predictably than the BAU. “Where was she when she vanished?” he asks JJ with a perfectly straight face.

“DC. Are you guys ready to hear about the circumstances?” JJ asks, glancing around the table.

Morgan sighs. “I guess so. What do we know?”

“She was in DC this past weekend for a training conference—like Reid said, she was giving a primer on a few specialized firearms. That was on Saturday. Her key card was definitely used at her hotel on Saturday night, but there are no security cameras that can definitively identify her. However, her rental car was in the parking lot until Sunday afternoon. After Saturday evening, no one has heard from her. Her car was found in the parking lot of a club called The Muldoon, but no one there will admit to having seen her. She had tickets for an 8 AM flight to California on Monday, but obviously never made it there.”

“I assume her car was checked for trace evidence?” Hotch asks.

JJ nods. “Of course, but since it was a rental, the evidence is obscured; it was cleaned between rentals, but not thoroughly. They did find Elle’s fingerprints, as well as several hairs that appear to be hers and are being DNA tested. There’s also fingerprints and DNA from dozens of other people—so far, the only identifiable fingerprints belong to either employees of the rental company or previous renters.”

“Are there security cameras on the parking lot?” Spencer asks. He already knows that there aren’t, and JJ confirms it. “So she could have been snatched from the parking lot. Maybe right when she was getting out of her car.”

“Yeah, but how would an unsub do that?” Morgan asks. “This is Elle we’re talking about. She would have had a gun with her. Or at least pepper spray or something. She doesn’t take risks.”

“Blitz her from behind, maybe with a… with chloroform or something?” Spencer suggests. He deliberately stutters on the suggestion. None of the rest of them want to imagine Elle dead. Let them think that’s something he doesn’t want in his own mind either.

“Actually, all of the guns registered to her were located either in her hotel room or in her house in Atlanta,” JJ says. Spencer feels a pang; he didn’t know she had a house in Atlanta. “So it’s possible a physically imposing unsub could have overpowered her without… rendering her unconscious immediately.”

“She could have been meeting someone there,” Hotch says. “That would explain her going unarmed. Though as Morgan said, I would be surprised if she didn’t at least have mace.”

“Elle didn’t even go unarmed at her desk,” Spencer points out. “It would have been hard for someone to gain her trust enough to get her to meet him somewhere public without a weapon. Especially since she’s a trained profiler and would notice anything suspicious.” He could accuse himself of bragging if there was anyone to understand him.

“We should check anyone she’s had any contact with, then,” Morgan says. “Is Garcia tracking her phone calls?”

Spencer feels a moment of panic, but JJ shakes her head. “It’s not officially a BAU case, remember? I’m sure the Metro police are on that.” He relaxes again. If it’s not Garcia, he doesn’t think they can trace him. He does have her cell phone, though; he should probably dump that.

Hotch stands up. “I think that’s all we can get for now. I’ll go call Prentiss and Rossi back in and we can compare.”

The only thing the other two agents can add is that it’s odd that, with all the different guns Elle owned, she didn’t bring any of them with her. Prentiss suggests that maybe she had another that wasn’t registered. Hotch allows that it’s possible. Morgan grunts and fiddles with his pen. They remember how she acted after Randall Garner. They remember the suspect she shot. They know she doesn’t always stick close to the law.

They write up their report and suggestions. JJ files it to hand off to the Metro cops, then moves on to the rest of the briefing. There’s a killer (not a serial yet) in Boston that the cops want a consult on. A man on death row in Texas has offered to be interviewed. They return to work as usual. Except nothing’s as usual, not today.

 

  
_Hope is paralyzing.  
-William Hightower, “To Hell…”_   


 

Work does proceed. Spencer flies out to Texas with Emily for a day, where they interview the killer. The man is remarkably forthcoming; Spencer has established a good rapport. It’s easy for him. Emily is happy with the way the interview has gone and doesn’t suspect a thing.

The Monday after they get back he goes into the break room and sees JJ, her back turned. She hiccups. He realizes instantly that she’s been crying. He walks up to her quietly, places his hands gently on her shoulders, though it makes him uncomfortable. She needs the comfort. She’s his friend. “Hey,” he says gently. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, Spence.” She hiccups again, then turns around quickly and buries her face in his chest. He manages to not flinch away. “It’s just… Elle’s been missing for a week. They haven’t found anything. Not a single clue.” He feels her tears dampen his shirt. “They’re not going to find her, are they?”

“They will,” he says, putting a tiny bit of a shake in his voice. He strokes her hair tentatively. “It’ll be okay, JJ. You’ll see.”

She looks up at him now, her eyes rimmed with red. “What are her chances? Statistically?”

He shakes his head. “Elle isn’t a statistic. You know that. Maybe she just… found something more interesting to do. She’ll call us and wonder why everyone is so worried. It’ll be all right.”

JJ smiles.

 

  
_You are stronger than him. He cannot break you.  
-Jason Gideon, “Revelations”_   


 

Spencer returns to Elle that night, as he has every night he’s been in the city. She sits up with a gasp as he opens the door. He’s glad she’s stopped trying to scream.

He feeds her, fucks her, then lets her shower. Her limbs shake. He helps her back to the bed and sits there with her, both of them naked. He puts his arm around her shoulders and holds her close. She shivers but doesn’t try to pull away. There are faint bruises on her wrists. He kisses them gently. They don’t speak for more than an hour.

He says, “I’m so glad you’re mine now.”

Elle closes her eyes and nods.


	11. Devolution

  


_Imagine what he’ll know by fifty.  
-Jason Gideon, “Plain Sight”_  


 

Spencer has had Elle for two and a half weeks when the team gets their first call out. There’s a serial rapist in Oregon. He hasn’t killed anyone but he’s taking personal effects, strange choices: one woman’s underwear, normal, but another woman’s favorite necklace, another’s shoes, another’s hair tie. The only thing tying the objects together is that the women were all wearing them at the time of their attack and each is the only item of clothing he removed. They’re only sure it’s the same unsub because of his MO—he catches them alone, pushes them to the ground, wears a ski mask and doesn’t speak—and the fact that the victims have a superficial physical similarity, all slim and blonde.

“I know none of us want to leave town,” Hotch says to a tense team. “Not with Elle still missing. But I know you all understand that we still need to do our job.”

“Rossi and I can go by ourselves,” Prentiss offers. “We’re the ones who didn’t know her.” Spencer sees Hotch wince; Prentiss winces an instant later, realizing, as they all did, that she used the past tense when referring to Elle. Everyone else probably thinks the same thing.

“It’s true, we could handle it,” Rossi says, coming to her rescue. “The rest of you can stay here to follow up any leads the Metro detectives come up with.”

Hotch shakes his head firmly. “No. JJ, at least, would have to go. We should bring as much of the team as we can, but I agree with the basic idea; one of us should stay behind.”

“That’s a good idea,” Spencer agrees. “Whoever stays here can work on the case with Garcia and be ready to help if there are any leads on Elle.” His heart’s beating hard. Of course, he wants it to be him. He can’t blow his cover by insisting, and he thinks she has enough food and water that she’ll be all right even if the case takes a week (he usually leaves her with just one arm cuffed to the bed now, so she can feed herself), but he can’t pass up any opportunity to spend more time with her.

“Well, that’s you, Reid,” Morgan says.

He feigns surprise. “Me? Are you sure?”

Hotch nods. “You’ve always had the best rapport with her.”

“Morgan’s the one who went on vacation with her,” he says hastily, awkwardly.

Morgan laughs. “And look at how well that went.”

“I agree,” JJ says. “If just one of us is going to have the chance to find Elle, I think she’d want it to be Spence.” She gives him the ghost of a wink. He gives her a tiny smile back. She’s trying to give him time with his imaginary girlfriend.

“Fine with me,” says Prentiss. “As long as genius boy here doesn’t solve the case while we’re all on the plane. I’d be really bored.”

Spencer shakes his head. “I think I can be extremely confident that I will not solve this case today. Have any of _you_ ever heard of an unsub who takes a different personal effect from each of his victims?” That gets a few more laughs. “I’m happy to stay behind if you all really think I’m the best one to do that.”

“Absolutely.” Hotch stands. “Wheels up in thirty. Reid, go over the casefile for now and then coordinate with Garcia.”

“Can do.”

 

  


_When a criminal devolves like this, they’re capable of anything.  
-Emily Prentiss, “Parasite”_  


 

He spends the afternoon with Garcia (and cookies). They go over the information on the women who have been raped, poring over them for any connection at all. There are a few tenuous connections; after all, the town they’re in isn’t that large. Nothing that could explain how the rapist is targeting them, though. Spencer is fairly certain they’re random victims. The DNA results, faster in the Quantico lab, come back; as they already knew based on the victims’ descriptions, it’s the same man, but he’s not in any system that they can find. Garcia puts in an order for the DNA to be checked against other rape cases in the area.

In the evening he goes straight to Elle. No need to stop at home. There’s nothing interesting there. Maybe this is home. “I’m staying home from a case to be with you,” he tells her when he comes in, and bends down to give her a long, lingering kiss. “I hope you’re grateful.” She nods.

They eat, then as he is starting to take off his clothes, his phone rings. He discards his vest and dives for it. “Hello?”

“Reid, it’s Hotch. There’s been another development.”

He catches Elle’s eye and holds his finger to his lips. “Don’t tell me. Another victim.”

“Is there any other kind of development?” Hotch sounds tired.

Spencer walks over to the bed and sits down, facing away from Elle. “What did he take this time?”

“A shirt. A white button-down blouse.”

“That’s different. Everything else has either been a small item or an accessory. Did he—” Suddenly Elle screams, high-pitched and desperate, cutting him off. He hisses breath in, scrambling to get to the other side of the bed, cover the mouthpiece of the phone, and not drop it. He kicks the blanket off the bed in the process, but he manages to straddle her and splay his free hand over her mouth and nose. He squeezes, cutting off her scream and her oxygen, and gulps in air, trying to control his breathing.

“Reid? Are you okay? What was that?”

“TV. Sorry, I didn’t know the volume would do that. I was just flipping channels, it’s some kind of horror movie.” He’s babbling. He shuts up. Hotch can’t get suspicious. Elle makes a tiny noise, whimpering, and he glares at her, not letting go. Her chest heaves under him as she tries to get air.

“Got the volume off?”

“Yeah. So was the victim not wearing any accessories?”

“That’s the strange thing. She was wearing a wedding ring as well as a necklace.”

Spencer shakes his head. Elle’s eyes are starting to roll back in her head. Slowly and carefully, he releases her nostrils. She sucks in, shifting his hips with the force of her breath, but he doesn’t let go. “That’s strange. Okay, he already has a necklace, so maybe he doesn’t want duplicates.”

“That fits with what we already know. There were two women wearing necklaces and he only took one of them.”

“But the wedding ring? I would think an anger-excitation rapist like this would take particular pleasure in stealing a symbol of chastity and love.”

“Maybe he’s not an anger-excitation rapist.”

“Maybe. You’ve talked to the women, right?”

“Of course.” Hotch sighs. “He certainly sounds like an anger-excitation rapist. How are things over there? Any news?”

“I would have called you right away if there had been.”

“I know. All right. Call if you come up with anything. At least one of us will probably not be sleeping tonight.”

“I’d criticize you for that, but it would be awfully hypocritical of me. Good luck.”

“You too.”

Spencer hangs up, sets the phone aside carefully, and finally removes his hand from Elle’s mouth. She stays quiet. He glares down at her and realizes that, now that he’s let go of the tight control he had to talk to Hotch, he’s shaking. He can’t believe she would betray him like that. “I could have killed you, you know. But I didn’t.”

Elle nods quickly, squeezing her eyes shut. “I know,” she whispers.

He slaps her face, forces her to look at him. “But you disobeyed me.”

“I—”

“No,” he cuts her off. “No excuses.” He lifts himself up so he’s on his knees and takes off his belt. “Maybe next time you’ll remember.” He turns around, takes her leg in his hand.

“Spencer, please—” Her begging ends with a yelp as the belt hits the bottom of her foot with a satisfying smack. His own soles twitch in sympathy, memory. This is right. This is just.

 

  


_When you’re being tortured, there’s no end in sight except giving them what they want.  
-Spencer Reid, “100”_  


 

He spends the night with Elle. In the morning, with his urges satisfied, his mind is clearer. He finds a big piece of paper, pins it up on the wall in Garcia’s office, and is sketching when she arrives.

She stops suddenly, her earrings jingling with the movement. “That’s not creepy, Reid.”

He gives her a half-smile, completing the figure. “Well, we have a creepy job, Garcia.”

“This is true.” She sits down and starts booting up her computers. “So what exactly is the goal of your creepy naked lady drawing?”

“I’m going to dress her.”

From the way Garcia turns around and squints at him through her glasses, she does not see his point. “Why draw her naked in the first place?”

“Because there are parts of her that won’t be dressed. Can you bring up the photos that we have of the items stolen from the victims?”

Her eyes widen. “Ah, I get it! Yeah, sure, just wait a minute for everybody to wake up.” She swivels back around in her chair and gives the nearest monitor an affectionate pat.

Spencer watches her for a moment, her total unconcern for his presence, her innocent neck, bared with her hair swept up. He could so easily kill her right now, come up behind her and wrap his hands around that neck, squeeze until all the breath is gone from her body. He could probably get away with it, claim to have come in after the killer escaped, work with the rest of the BAU on a fruitless search.

But he won’t. It’s nothing but an intellectual exercise. He feels no urge, just realizes how easy it would be. Maybe if he didn’t have Elle at home he would be tempted. His mind returns to the way her body shuddered underneath his as she struggled for breath. He turns back to his drawing, frowns at it, and starts sketching a back view.

A few minutes later, Garcia has brought up what pictures they have—the blouse, the necklace, the shoes. He sketches them in, paying as much attention to detail as he can. The blouse is plain, a white button-down, untailored and unremarkable. The shoes are patent leather pumps, no embellishment, no famous designer. The necklace is the only item that seems at all personal; it is a delicate crystal heart on a silver chain, engraved with the letter K, the first letter of the victim’s mother’s name.

The hair tie and underwear there are of course no pictures of, but he remembers the descriptions given and sketches them in as well. The hair tie is a plain black elastic band with a brass clasp. The underwear is white with grey stripes, “bikini style,” he remembers, and has to ask Garcia to search for photos of that style so he can get the fit right.

The details might not be relevant, of course. It could be the woman wearing it that is important to the unsub. But it’s always important to include details when he has them. They might reveal something that wouldn’t have occurred to him otherwise.

When he’s finished drawing all the clothing items on his female figure, as though she is the one wearing all of them, he steps back and surveys the big picture. A blouse, underwear, and shoes, plus accessories. Certainly an attractive way for a woman to dress, but not realistic. He hears the squeak of Garcia’s chair as she turns around, and without bothering to glance at her, asks, “You would never dress like this, would you?”

“No.” She laughs. “At the very least I have to wear a bra or the girls are all over the place.”

“I, um, that wasn’t exactly what I meant,” he stammers, looking down at his feet.

Laughing, she gets out of her chair and comes to stand next to him, slipping her arm through his. “I don’t know, I mean, I guess I can see a hooker dressing like that. But if I were a hooker I’d wear something that looks a little bit less like underwear than that.”

Spencer shakes his head. “None of the hookers I’ve ever met dress anything like this.”

“And you’ve met a whole bunch of hookers, have you?”

He is saved from having to answer that by Morgan’s voice, emanating from Garcia’s computer. “Hey, baby girl, you there?”

“Of course I am, buttercup,” she answers immediately, whirling around and letting go of Spencer’s arm. “How’s Oregon?”

“Wet,” Morgan says matter-of-factly. “You got Reid there?”

“I’m here,” Spencer says, walking up behind Garcia to lean on the back of her chair. “Has there been a new development?”

“Actually, yeah. JJ did a press conference last night and it’s borne some fruit. Two other victims have come forward.”

Spencer hisses in a breath. “New victims?”

“Not exactly. New to us, but not recent.”

Spencer nods. “Only twenty percent of rapes are even reported. I’m not surprised that there are others. What did he take from them?”

“A bra and—get this—a wedding ring.”

“Oh.” He glances back at his drawing. “That would explain why he didn’t take the ring from the most recent victim.”

“You think he’s making some kind of collection?”

“I think he’s dressing someone up.”

“Like a blow-up doll?”

“Could be.” Spencer walks over to his drawings and quickly sketches in a wedding ring. The bra presumably wouldn’t show through the shirt. “Garcia, can you angle the camera so Morgan can see the pictures?”

“Of course.” She adjusts. “Can you see them, honeycake?”

“Yeah. So, you think he’s putting together an outfit, Reid? Why would he start with accessories?”

“Maybe he thinks accessories are more important. Maybe he had clothes before and decided they weren’t good enough.”

“That makes a lot of sense, actually,” comes Hotch’s voice. Spencer glances at the screen but can’t see Hotch on the monitor. “He probably raped other women before he started stealing accessories. Then he took the underwear and it made some fantasy more real, so he started adding to it.”

“Just like Roderick Gless,” Spencer adds.

“You think he has a corpse?” Morgan says.

“No—I guess it’s not like Roderick Gless, more like the opposite. Gless needed the clothes of a particular person, but this unsub needs the clothes of live women. It could very well be a blow-up doll. That’s not to say that there’s no chance it’s a corpse, but I think the corpse would have clothes already, ones that belonged to the live woman.”

“Yes,” says Hotch. “He wants a way to make whatever he has more real, more like a living victim. Of course, there’s a problem there.”

Spencer nods. “Once he gets all the pieces he needs, he’ll most likely stop raping and then we’ll never be able to catch him.”

Garcia lets out an irritated groan. “It really sucks that letting this guy stop raping women is a bad thing.”

“That it does,” Morgan agrees. “But this is something to look into.”

“Go over old rape cases,” Spencer says. “Solved and unsolved. If he was in jail without access to real women, that could have been when he got started with his surrogate.”

“And we’ll have JJ go on the air again to ask about similar rapes without the stolen item,” Hotch says. “Good work, Reid. Any news about Elle?”

He shakes his head, letting his shoulders slump. “I’m waiting on calls from some suburban police departments. It could be she was taken out of the city.”

“Okay. We’ll call you back later.” The connection is cut off.

Garcia sits quietly, fingers unmoving for once. Spencer turns back to his drawing and starts to lightly sketch in a bra, as though it’s showing through the shirt. He should have asked what color it was. He’d grab some of Garcia’s markers, but as far as he knows, none of the items taken have any color to them other than black or white. That could be significant, too. He’s pondering what it means, having almost forgotten Garcia’s presence, when she speaks.

“Reid.” Her voice is soft and shaky. He turns instantly and walks to her chair, silent. She looks up at him. She’s removed her glasses and her eyes are full of tears, though none have fallen yet. “Do you think there’s any chance… that Elle is still alive?”

He nods and gives her a half-smile. “I definitely think there’s a chance.” He can put all the confidence of certainty in his voice. “Keep up hope, Garcia. I know you can do that.”

She nods and manages a smile, even while a tear falls, streaking its way down her cheek through her carefully-applied makeup. He reaches out and wipes it away. He’s starting to feel a little guilty about putting the team through all this worry. Maybe if he kills Elle and lets her body be found, this will end and he can go back to keeping slightly smaller secrets.

He could do that. But he doesn’t want to. Not yet.

 

  


_Freud’s been discredited, but Jung still has his merits.  
-Spencer Reid, “The Instincts”_  


 

Garcia sends the team a list of men who recently got out of jail after being convicted of rape. All of their DNA is on file, though, and none of it matches. They catch him two days later when he rapes another woman, and she screams loud enough and long enough that he’s barely got the skirt off her when a policeman comes and knocks him down.

In his house, they find a sophisticated silicone doll. The underwear, shoes, bra, shirt, wedding ring, and hair tie that it’s wearing all belong to the victims. There are also two discarded bras in a closet; they are different sizes. The doll is also wearing a skirt, pantyhose, and a red cardigan. None of those items can be traced. Some questions don’t get answers.

Spencer goes home to Elle and tells her how he solved the case. She laughs and congratulates him and seems genuinely proud. He’s a profiler and he knows Elle, so he should trust his instincts, but he’s too used to lies to believe her. Still, she’s being good, so he doesn’t hurt her. He just fucks her with a knife in his hand and then lays next to her, trying to decide whether to kill her.


	12. Coincidence

  
_Nobody sees the signs, Reid, you know that!  
-Aaron Hotchner, “Elephant’s Memory”_   


 

It’s late. Morgan decides, reluctantly, that he’d better get home. But first, his end-of-the-day routine: checking the news. He feels more relaxed if he knows what might be coming up the next day.

Elle has been missing for so long that he has lost count (four weeks, three days, and nine hours).

At first, the news has nothing interesting; a few deaths, a few robberies. Then something catches his eye. A name that looks familiar. He clicks for more and reads the first full paragraph.

“The skeletal remains found in a Las Vegas park have been identified as belonging to seventeen-year-old Alexa Lisbon, who vanished on her way home from school fifteen years ago.”

A chill runs down his spine.

He skims the rest of the article quickly. The body is nothing but bones, and has consequently been sent to the Jeffersonian Institute, who discovered a non-deadly skull fracture and, somewhat bizarrely, multiple fractures of the pubic bones. It makes Morgan sick to think how that might have occurred. Not that he hasn’t seen worse. But this…

No. It has to be a coincidence.

He scrolls to the bottom. There’s a picture. The bottom drops out of his stomach.

The lines of the face, the large, bright eyes, the sweet little rosebud mouth… she’s younger, far more innocent, but she’s almost a mirror image of Elle.

He leans back, exhales, rubs his eyes, and then looks up at the offices. He has to bring this to someone. The rest of the team has to know.

Rossi might be better. He doesn’t know Reid as well. He wouldn’t resist believing.

But Rossi never worked with Elle. He never saw the strange connection she and Reid had.

And Rossi’s not here, anyway. He went home an hour ago. It has to be Hotch.

Morgan knows better than to really drag his feet. He walks up to Hotch’s office door, knocks, and since he has seen Hotch isn’t on the phone, walks right in.

Hotch looks up and frowns. He must recognize the look on Morgan’s face. “What’s wrong?”

Morgan gestures at Hotch’s tablet. “Can I show you something?”

“Of course.” Hotch nods and hands Morgan the computer.

He brings up the article but doesn’t hand it over yet. “You remember how Reid and Elle always kind of had a thing? I was never really sure if they were dating or what, but there was always something between them.”

“Yes, there certainly was. That’s why I had him stay behind to watch for news.”

Derek swallows against the thought. If it’s what he’s thinking… no. No, it can’t be. “And you remember the Owen Savage case? And how invested Reid was in it?”

“Yes, of course—is this going somewhere, Morgan?”

Morgan turns the tablet so Hotch can see the first paragraph, but doesn’t give it up yet. “He told me about this girl. Alexa Lisbon. I remember the name. She was someone who tortured Reid in high school. He had a crush on her and she betrayed him.”

Hotch shakes his head, unsure, but still reaches for the tablet. Morgan lets him take it. “Read the article and look at the picture at the bottom.”

Hotch does, mutely, stoically. Morgan knows when he reaches the picture because his eyebrows rise half a millimeter.

“She could be Elle’s little sister, couldn’t she?” he says softly.

“She could.” Hotch’s Adam’s apple rises visibly. “You can’t possibly be suggesting what I think you’re suggesting.”

“But you came to the same conclusion.”

Hotch shakes his head, harder this time. “Are you sure this is the same girl Reid told you about?”

“Same name. I might not have his memory but I’m not going to forget that, Hotch. Vegas high school. She went missing the year Reid was twelve. The same year he graduated high school.”

Hotch turns abruptly, pulls out the drawer of a filing cabinet, gets out a file and flips quickly through it. Morgan sees Reid’s photo. Hotch finds what he’s looking for, then turns back to the tablet and types in a search. Morgan watches while he scrolls and clicks, his eyes darting back and forth. Then he sits back with a sigh.

“They did go to the same high school. But Reid… he’s not capable of something like this.”

“Psychopaths are good at hiding what they are.”

“From profilers? For years? He’s never been able to lie to any of us. He’s just not convincing.”

“How can we be sure?”

Morgan flips open his phone. “Garcia can track him.” He waits while it rings, then hears Penelope’s voice. “Derek, you know I love you, but this had better be important.”

He can’t help half-smiling. Kevin must be over. “Sorry, baby girl. I’m afraid it is.”

She groans. “Do you need me to come in?”

“Not if you can do this from your home computer.”

“Probably. What have you got?”

He takes a deep breath. “I’m not going to tell you what this is about, because you’re not going to like it. But I need you to track Reid’s cell phone.”

He hears her sharp intake of breath and tapping at the keyboard start almost at the same time. “Reid’s not in trouble, is he?”

“I don’t think so,” he tells her, trying to sound reassuring. Of course, Reid might start to be in trouble any minute now. “You got it?”

“No,” she says, sounding nonplussed. “His phone is turned off.”

Morgan pinches the bridge of his nose. That is not a good sign at all. “Okay. Thanks, beautiful. Go enjoy the rest of your night with Kevin.”

She laughs. “I will. And if my phone turns off, do not hunt me down.”

“Won’t happen,” he agrees. His fingers shake a little as he closes the phone.

“She can’t find him,” says Hotch, making it half a question, half a statement.

Morgan shakes his head. “He wouldn’t make himself unavailable without letting us know.”

“Not unless he has something to hide.” Hotch turns to his computer and starts typing, his eyes level and focused. “I’m calling in the rest of the team.”

“What if one of them contacts Reid?”

“He won’t see it right away, at least. And I’m telling them that I’m contacting everyone and they don’t need to. I don’t want to alarm them before it’s necessary.”

Morgan nods. “I’ll go make copies of that article.”

 

  
_I don’t like folks in disguises.  
-Derek Morgan, “About Face”_   


 

“Is it Elle?” is the first question of all three team members when they arrive, and “It could be,” is Morgan’s answer to all three of them as he ushers them quickly into the conference room.

Hotch is the last in, and he closes the door with an oppressive finality. They’re the only non-security personnel left in the building, and it’s eerily dark; this is the only room with full lighting. The room is so quiet for a moment that Morgan can hear the humming of the fluorescent bulbs. Then JJ breaks the silence with a baffled, “Where’s Reid?”

“That’s a very good question,” Hotch says grimly, taking his seat. Morgan passes out copies of the article and watches the others as they read. JJ’s eyes widen as she reaches the photo at the end, but Prentiss and Rossi just have faintly puzzled expressions on their faces.

“You called us here in the middle of the night to show us a development in a fifteen-year-old case?” Prentiss says. “Does this have some connection to another murder?”

“I think it might,” says Morgan. He folds his hands on the table, nervous. “This girl, Alexa Lisbon, Reid knew her. He told me about her. He had a crush on her and he got a message asking him to meet her after school. He was a twelve-year-old in public high school, remember. She met him there along with the entire football team. They stripped him naked and tied him to a goalpost. The whole school watched.”

“That’s _horrible_ ,” JJ whispers.

“This girl,” says Prentiss, jabbing her finger down at the table, seeming to gather her thoughts. “This girl is someone who went to school with Reid? And he had a crush on her, and she got him bullied?”

“Yes,” Derek says.

“And she’s dead,” says Rossi.

“Killed that same year,” JJ says. Her eyes are filled with tears. “And she looks an awful lot like Elle.”

“Oh my god,” Prentiss gasps.

“That’s why Reid isn’t here,” Rossi says flatly. “Where is he?”

“We don’t know,” says Hotch. “Garcia tried to track him but his phone is turned off.”

“His phone is never turned off,” says JJ.

“Exactly. Do any of you know where he might be?”

“We could try his apartment,” says Prentiss. “Did anyone call his landline?”

“I don’t think he has one,” Morgan says. “And we’d lose the element of surprise.”

JJ shakes her head. “You’re all assuming that Spence is—some kind of—”

Morgan swallows. “I don’t want to think it any more than you do. God knows I don’t. But there’s something going on. There’s been no sign of Elle, and when she worked with us there was always a thing between the two of them. I know you noticed that.”

“Yes, but—” JJ chokes suddenly, bringing her hands to her mouth. “Oh god. Oh my god.”

“What is it?” Prentiss asks gently, reaching over to JJ, holding out her hand.

JJ takes it and grips so tightly her knuckles turn white. “The same weekend Elle disappeared. You all remember, we were on that kidnapping case.”

Morgan nods. He thinks he might have an idea where this is going. “Reid stayed up all night solving that ransom note.”

“I thought it was weird.” Her whole face is white, drained of color. Her lower lip is trembling. “I asked him about it. He told me he had a girlfriend. A fellow cop who wasn’t going to be in town for very long. He said her name was Eileen. He was in a hurry to see her but he didn’t think he was going to introduce her to anyone else. He said he had a great time with her that day… I’m going to-” She runs out of the room suddenly, dragging Prentiss with her. They leave behind a yawning silence.

“We’ll find them,” Rossi says firmly. “Did you track her cell phone? I know Metro hasn’t found it, but Metro doesn’t have Garcia.”

“I don’t know.” He sighs and looks at his phone. “She’ll kill me if I call again.”

“There are other routes,” says Hotch. “The club where her car was found. Her hotel. No one remembers seeing her, but maybe they saw him.”

“Maybe he made a credit card purchase that weekend,“ says Rossi. “Can we track that?”

Morgan shrugs. “I’ll send Garcia a text message. Maybe she’ll see it later.”

He’s just sending it when Prentiss and JJ return. JJ is still pale, but calmer, and there are damp strands of hair around her face. “We can do this,” she says briskly. “Who’s going to the club?”

“Morgan and Prentiss, you take that,” says Hotch. “Rossi and I will go to the hotel. JJ, try putting together a broadcast. I don’t know if Reid might have the TV on or something.”

“He never watches the news,” says JJ.

Hotch shakes his head. “I don’t think we can rely on predicting his moves anymore. And he might want to follow the investigation as well as he can. He’s certainly already part of it.”

“I don’t think we’re looking at this right,” says Prentiss. “Shouldn’t we be trying to profile the victims?”

“I don’t think we have enough information for that,” says Morgan. “Only two victims, and only one of them is dead.” He pauses and swallows. “Only one body.”

“But if we knew we had an unsub who’d killed one woman fifteen years ago and recently kidnapped another, we would be able to do something with that information,” she counters. “We can take a stab at what kind of an unsub this is.”

“Highly organized,” says Hotch. “A psychopath or a sociopath.” His expression displays no emotion.

“But we _do_ know who we’re looking for,” Derek says. His mind feels like it’s moving through molasses. It’s so hard to think of Reid, his pretty boy friend, this way. “I think it will be most productive to actually look for him. If we can’t find him, then we try to build a profile and predict from that where he might be that we haven’t looked. But I think that will be very difficult for us.”

“We need to call in another team on this,” says Rossi. “We’re all too emotionally involved. The three of you know Elle, but it’s even worse that we all know Reid, or think we do, and we all care about him.”

“We start looking,” Hotch says firmly. “Morgan is right. If we can’t find him that way, we’ll move on to a more traditional profiling technique. Morgan and Prentiss, the club. Rossi, let’s go.”

Prentiss stands, then bends to give JJ’s shoulder a squeeze and whisper a barely-audible, “Are you okay?” JJ looks up with a smile and nods. She doesn’t look okay. But none of them do.

 

  
_He’s a smart kid. And part of the sexual sadist’s profile is the ability to mimic honesty and sincerity.  
-Derek Morgan, “Sex, Birth, Death”_   


 

Spencer is in the apartment with Elle, toying with her damp hair. They’ve just showered and he’s almost content. He is feeling a bit of an itch to move on, even as his eyes travel over the perfect curves of Elle’s body. He traces one finger around a brown nipple, making her gasp and giggle.

She seems content, too. Comfortable with him there. It’s very strange. It makes him want to scare her, want to destroy her. But is he ready to lose her? If he kills her, the trap will be empty, and he’ll be lonely. But perhaps her death will be so beautiful as to be worth it. Beautiful, it certainly will be.

 

  
_The BAU doesn’t employ too many agents with a relaxing kind of mentality, do they?_ _-Max Ryan, “Unfinished Business”_

 

The club proves fruitless. No one there recognizes Reid’s picture. Emily is driving and they’re looking for a coffee shop on the way back to the BAU when Derek’s phone rings.

He feels muzzy-headed, but answers quickly. “Morgan.”

“Hey, I just saw your text.” It’s Garcia, sleepy but speaking quickly. “You really need me to come in?”

“I’m afraid so, baby doll.” Prentiss parks in front of a Starbucks and they get out. Morgan feels stiff, climbing down from the high seat of the SUV.

“Did something happen to Reid?”

He sighs. “I don’t know.”

“Should I check for his phone again?”

“Please. And while you’re at it, can you look for Elle’s?”

“Oh, sweet cheeks, you don’t think I’ve been looking for her phone every day for weeks? It’s completely dead. The battery’s gone.” He hears a sharp intake of breath. “Reid’s phone is back on.”

He steps out of line and signals to Emily to order for him. “Please tell me he is in his apartment and all we need to do is kick down the door and make sure he’s okay.”

“You didn’t check there yet?”

“No point if we don’t know where he is.”

“Well, he’s not there. I don’t recognize this address.” She reads it off to him.

“That’s not a very nice neighborhood. We’ll find him, though. You may not need to come in after all. Thanks, beautiful.”

“Keep me updated?” Her question ends with an anxious squeak.

“I’ll do my best. Keep your phone on.” The last thing he wants to do is tell Garcia about his suspicions. If he’s right, she’ll have to find out eventually, but better to shield her for as long as possible.

“Always.” She hangs up. Emily hands Morgan a coffee without comment. He gratefully takes a gulp, ignoring the scalding temperature, then holds up his phone to check the time. It’s past midnight.

He takes a slightly slower drink of his coffee, then sighs and nods in response to Emily’s questioning look. “She found him.”

 

  
_It's essential for this unsub that he sees the terror in his victims' eyes. That's what gets him off.  
-Emily Prentiss, “No Way Out”_   


 

Spencer knows it’s dangerous to let himself be unreachable, so he turns his phone on once Elle is asleep. No messages. He lays back on the bed with a contented sigh. No cases tonight. Nothing but time. He takes his knife out of his bag and flips it between his fingers, making it appear and disappear, until he falls asleep himself.

A familiar sound wakes him: police sirens. Elle is awake too, tense by his side, the hand that’s cuffed to the bed clenched in a tight fist. His heart beats hard. He jumps out of the bed and pulls his pants on, telling himself that sirens are hardly unusual in this neighborhood—but there are too many, too close, and his intuition is screaming at him that he’s been found out. He doesn’t let go of his knife.

“Spencer?” Elle whispers as he goes to the window.

“Quiet,” he orders her. There’s nothing to see out there. Nothing but a tiny bit of reflection of blue and red flashing lights. He gets his gun, checks that it’s loaded (even though he knows it is), and presses it into Elle’s free hand.

“What are you doing?” she asks in the tiniest possible voice. Her fingers don’t close around the handle.

“Take it,” he says. He has no fear that she will shoot him. She might. She might not. He stands over her, toying with his knife. Even if the lights and sirens outside are not for him, the chance that they will find him is too great. He can’t hear what is happening outside in the rest of the building; the soundproofing he has built up in the room goes both ways.

Elle is staring up at him, her brown eyes huge, refusing to grip the gun. The knife is cold in his hand. It’s now or never. He lowers it to her throat as the door splinters and crashes open behind him.

 

  
_Agent Greenaway did not have to die like that.  
-Randall Garner, “The Fisher King, Part II”_   


 

Morgan has tried to prepare himself for this. He’s imagined what they will find. He knows Elle might be dead. He knows Reid is not going to be the friend he thought he knew. But there’s a tiny part of him that must have hoped there was some other explanation, that Reid had nothing to do with Elle’s disappearance, that everyone is okay, and it must be that tiny part that sends bile churning in his throat. He swallows it down.

Reid is standing not a yard away from him, shirtless, holding a long, sharp knife to Elle’s throat. She is naked, handcuffed to a bed, filthy sheets under her and a terrible, hollow expression on her face. There’s a gun in her hand but she’s not even holding it.

Everything freezes for a moment while he determines that Elle is, in fact, not dead. Her ribs, painfully visible through her skin, rise and fall shallowly. Reid isn’t moving the knife.

Derek lifts his gun. Somehow, his hands aren’t shaking. “Drop the knife, Reid. I will not hesitate to shoot you.”

With painful slowness, his former friend straightens up and turns around. He holds his arms out to his sides and drops the knife on the floor. There is a horrifying rictus of a grin on his face. “You don’t want to shoot me, Morgan. Then you’d never find out about the others.”

Derek sees red. There’s the part of the profile that he hasn’t wanted to admit to himself, even subconsciously: a psychopath doesn’t just stop for fifteen years. There would be other victims. But he wouldn’t allow himself to think that way. He’s barely aware of his own motions as he holsters his gun and throws himself at Reid, slamming him into the wall, jerking his arms back to handcuff him.

Behind him, he is vaguely aware of Prentiss and Hotch entering, Prentiss’ gasp of horror. He sees her out of the corner of her eye, bending over Elle, wrapping a sheet around her, speaking softly to her. “Elle, I’m Agent Prentiss. It’s okay. You’re going to be okay. Hotch, do you see a key?”

“How did you figure it out?” Reid asks, his voice full of sick mirth.

“Alexa Lisbon.” Derek spits the words as he hauls Reid around and heads for the apartment door.

And then the worst sound of all, Elle’s voice, raised in a terrified wail as Derek drags her kidnapper out of the room: “Spencer! Spencer!”

 

  
_Are we all capable of becoming someone like that?  
-Emily Prentiss, “True Night”_   


 

Emily digs through the trash and rugs laying around the room with shaking fingers. There’s no key to be found. Hotch smashes the wooden headboard with the butt of his gun until he can rip the handcuff through it. They will be able to remove it from Elle at the hospital. Emily has already looked over Elle’s body and seen that while she is bruised, cut, and starved, none of her injuries put her in immediate danger.

She tries to ignore the other woman’s terrified, tragic words. “Spencer! No! They can’t arrest him…” Her voice is thin and hoarse.

“You’re free now,” Emily says in her gentlest voice, slipping an arm around Elle’s shoulders. “Can you sit up? Let’s get you downstairs. JJ’s waiting.”

Elle nods, and with Emily’s help she stands, but when her feet touch the floor she cries out, stumbles, and falls back onto the bed, grimacing. Emily stumbles too, as memory hits her: Reid, in the cemetery, limping to meet them, his feet deeply injured by the man who had him held hostage.

Hotch must remember, too, but he takes over for Emily, one arm around Elle’s shoulders and one under her knees. “I’ve got her. You call for an ambulance. She could have internal injuries.”

Emily nods numbly and goes through the motions, saying the words she’s said too many times before, forcing the FBI part of her brain to take over. Hotch carries Elle out and she follows him, to be replaced in the room by Rossi, who is telling the forensics crew to just wait a few minutes, he needs to profile the room first. It seems unreal. Elle clings to Hotch’s neck, but she keeps turning her head, trying to see around corners and down stairs.

She hadn’t really believed it. Not until now. She thought it was an angle worth pursuing, but until she actually saw him with a knife to Elle’s throat, she could never believe anything bad of him. Spencer Reid. She forces herself to think his name, forces herself to make it real. Her colleague, her friend. Someone she would have trusted with any secret. Someone she has risked her life for. Someone who probably wouldn’t hesitate to kill her.

She is broken out of her reverie when they make it outside through the crowd of onlookers and JJ screams and runs to them. She and Hotch maneuver Elle, still wrapped in the sheet, into the back of a police car to keep her feet off the ground. Emily hovers, feeling oddly like a third wheel. Elle doesn’t speak.

JJ gets in the ambulance with Elle and promises to keep the team updated. Emily feels the horror starting to fade, the anger and fear creeping back in. She shuts them off. There will be time for grief later, when they get the answer that Reid has almost promised them: “the others.”


	13. Flashback: Alexa

_It only takes eleven pounds of pressure to incapacitate your victim, and if you hang on for at least fifty seconds, they’ll never recover.  
-Spencer Reid, “Unfinished Business”_

 

There’s a part of the story that he never told Morgan.

He waits almost a month, long enough for them to forget. (And it only serves to stoke the fire, knowing that _they_ will forget but _he_ never will.) While he waits, he observes. He listens to the girls, especially her, to find out who they think is the cutest boy in school. Then he keeps an eye out for Michael Brompton’s handwriting. Soon he can duplicate it. Not that she’ll ever notice the difference.

He writes her a note purporting to be from Brompton, telling her to meet him in the park near the school, out by the mountains. Brompton is dating another girl, a cheerleader, but Spencer is sure Alexa won’t be able to resist anyway. And he’s not disappointed.

She’s obviously surprised to see him waiting there instead of Brompton, and looks like she’s about to turn around, but he has a plan for this. “Hi, Alexa,” he says, ducking his head shyly. He has to play to her ego, make himself look like he’s intimidated. He’s not, but he has practice with this. “Michael wanted me to meet you here.”

She frowns suspiciously and crosses her arms over her perfect breasts, but she doesn’t leave. “Why isn’t he here?”

Spencer shrugs, doing his best to stare at Alexa’s shoes. They’re girls’ sneakers, clean and perfect. “I think he’s setting up a surprise for you. I’ll bring you over there.”

She sighs and steps closer. His skin tingles with her nearness. “Okay. Let’s go already.”

He takes the lead, walking into the little, scrubby forest that manages to grow here despite the harsh desert conditions. His hands are balled fists, hidden in his pockets. They walk until it’s hard to see more than a few feet in any direction. The ravine is to their left, hidden by vines.

He knows this place; no one else does. He’s sure of that, because even when he’s waited out his tormentors here until the sun vanishes and the lights of Las Vegas take over, no one has ever come through. It’s quiet and it’s his.

“He’s just past there,” Spencer says, stopping and pointing at a thick, gnarled trunk. Alexa doesn’t like it but she walks past, not even glancing sideways at him. He bends down and picks up a rock.

“Michael?” he hears her calling. Her feet scuffle around in the dead leaves, and she comes back around the other side, frowning. “He’s not here.”

“I know,” Spencer says, walking up to her. She stares at him, confused, but before she can say anything else, he lifts the rock and bashes her in the side of the head with it.

She stumbles a few times before falling down, trying to brace herself against the tree but finally landing on her back. Her head is bleeding heavily but she’s not dying of it, just lying there blinking. That wasn’t his plan, but it’s okay. It’s perfect, actually. He climbs on top of her, straddling her waist, and puts his hands around her throat. It’s so slender and soft, and he feels the pulse in her arteries, beating hard. She’s terrified. It excites him.

He pushes his glasses up with his shoulder and bends over her, making sure his face is all she can see. She moans and tries to move her arms, but she’s weak. “You’re mine,” he whispers to her, and tightens his grip.

It takes a long time for her to die. She’s bigger than him, and even with her already injured, it takes a lot of effort to maintain his grip around her throat. But the time doesn’t seem to pass for Spencer. He’s too riveted by her struggle for breath, her sluggish blinks, the way her body spasms underneath him. When he finally lets go there are vivid bruises on her neck and he’s panting.

He’s only twelve years old but he knows what he’s feeling. His mother believes in sexual openness and even if she didn’t, she might never have noticed some of the sexually explicit material in the books she reads him. He strokes Alexa’s face, feeling disturbed and intrigued. Shouldn’t she be naked? Well, he can fix that.

She’s surprisingly heavy, a dead weight, but he manages to get her clothes off, only tearing them a little. Then he stands over her, looking her up and down. Then he pushes her legs apart with his toe and crouches down to look at her private parts. It’s so different. He pushes his fingers into it, exploring, and half-consciously his other hand finds the rock. He’s so disgusted and so excited.

He parts the lips with the rock, pushes it in, then pulls it back and bashes it again and again. By the time he’s finished it looks like ground meat. He’s trembling and satisfied.

He stands up, stretches, and pushes the body a few inches at a time, toward the edge of the ravine. He let her fall a bit further than he’d planned, but he can still get her in. He watches the body fall to the ground through the leaves and vines, then picks up the rock again and digs a hole for it and the clothes. He tamps down the dirt and covers the spot with leaves.

His mother still doesn’t notice how late he’s coming home.


	14. Liar

_My god.  
What?  
Elle.  
-Jason Gideon and Derek Morgan, “Derailed”_

 

Jason Gideon is in a diner in Virginia, enjoying a particularly good slice of cherry pie (and after three years of diners, he knows his cherry pie, though it always seems to be best in Jersey) when the news catches his attention.

He doesn’t know at first what’s caused him to look up at the small TV bolted to the corner. He’s used to tuning the news out, wishing they wouldn’t play the same thing in diners all the time. Or maybe that’s why he chooses diners, because he knows, somewhere in the subconscious profiler mind that he’s tried so hard to bury, that someday the news will be important.

He squints at the TV and reads the headline below the anchor. _FBI agent arrested in connection with disappearance._

He can hear what she’s saying now. “Dr. Spencer Reid, the youngest ever recruit to the Behavioral Analysis Unit, also claims to have several other victims, though he has not yet identified any of them. Prosecutors say…”

 _How will you know when you get there?_

He knows where he’s going now. Gideon gets up, pulls some cash out of his wallet to overpay his bill, and runs outside to his car.

 

_I don’t understand the world anymore.  
-Jason Gideon, “Doubt”_

 

Morgan is taking a coffee break, because he’s now been awake for twenty-six hours and there’s no way he can sleep, when there’s a commotion at the doors to the BAU. He feels sweat break out on his face. There can’t be something else happening. Not tonight.

When he sees what it is he nearly drops his coffee.

“Let me talk to him,” says Jason Gideon, ignoring the security guard arguing with him, the agents and secretaries babbling at him, the fact that he’s back in the building he abandoned without explanation more than three years ago.

“It’s okay,” Morgan calls to the security guard. “He’s with me. Let him through.”

They don’t speak as he leads—really, Gideon leads, he knows the way and he’s in a hurry—to the interrogation room. Morgan has a thousand questions but he’s not in the mood to ask them right now. And he can see that Gideon’s not in the mood to answer. There are bigger things at stake.

Hotch and Prentiss are watching Reid through the glass when they approach. Hotch turns at the sound. “What—” he starts, but Gideon walks past, ignoring all of them, to slam the door. Morgan hurries to the two-way glass to see what will happen.

At first Gideon stands inside the door and Reid just sits in the chair. They’re staring at each other. Neither speaks. Then Gideon walks to the other chair, pulls it back, sits down slowly, places his hands on his knees. “Spencer,” he says.

Reid just looks down at his hands, handcuffed (even though Morgan’s sure he could get out of them if he wanted to) and clasped in his lap.

They sit there like that for fifteen minutes. Morgan can count it by the ticking of the clock, though he can’t take his eyes off the two men in the interrogation room. He doesn’t hear Hotch or Prentiss move, either.

Gideon starts talking, in his calm, quiet voice, though it’s sped by fear and anger and urgency. “Spencer, talk to me. You’re a good kid. A great agent. I trusted you.” He keeps going, his voice rising a little as he talks, pleading. Morgan wonders what he would see if he was looking at Gideon’s face, if he would see worry or panic or anger. Reid doesn’t move, not even his face.

Finally, Gideon asks, “Just tell me, Spencer, why?”

“Why do you think, Gideon?” Spencer finally snaps, slamming his hands on the table, his eyes wild. Morgan actually flinches back. “Because you left me!”

There’s silence for another minute. Morgan can’t imagine the expression on Gideon’s face. He always blamed himself for everything. Has he really not thought to blame himself for this?

Though he must know, as Derek does, that it doesn’t work that way. Spencer must have been hiding his nature for his entire life. He took his first victim when he was twelve. Precocious in every area, including murder. But Gideon was always a father to Reid; maybe two fathers leaving was just too much.

“Spencer, I’m sorry,” Gideon finally whispers.

Reid has let his hands fall into his lap again, and is staring down at them. “That’s not good enough.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Gideon asks, and Morgan can’t help but wince at the despair in his old colleague’s voice.

Reid looks up and straight into his eyes. “If certain conditions are met, I will tell you who the others were, and where they are now. I won’t tell anyone else. Just you.”

“I’m going in,” says Hotch, and it almost startles Morgan to hear someone else’s voice in this room.

As Hotch walks around to the door, Morgan turns to Emily. “Anything from JJ?”

Emily shakes her head, her eyes still fixed on Reid’s grim face. “Elle’s still asleep, I guess. Can’t blame her.”

Morgan shakes his head, but there’s nothing else to say, and Hotch is standing by the table, arms folded tightly across his chest. Reid hasn’t moved his head. “I’m listening to your conditions.”

“One, the death penalty is off the table.” Reid watches Gideon, not Hotch. “Two, I’m not going to prison. I want to be in a mental institution, preferably Bennington. Three, if I’m not in Bennington, I will be permitted to write to my mother daily. Four—” and for the second time since they put him in this room, Dr. Reid displays a hint of emotion, a blaze of anger in his eyes. “No one will ever tell my mother about this. Do you understand?”

“Spencer, you know I can’t make these decisions,” Gideon says softly, spreading his hands.

Reid jerks his head towards Hotch. “He can.”

“I can guarantee you no death penalty,” Hotch says with admirable restraint. For the first time Morgan notices that neither he nor Gideon are looking at the other. They’re both focused on Reid. “But you know I have to talk to the DA for the rest of it.”

“I’ll wait.”

“I’ll wait with you,” Gideon says without moving. Hotch just turns and leaves the room.

“Are you going to give him his demands?” Emily asks when he comes out.

“What choice do we have?” Hotch says.

“We don’t,” Derek says. “Garcia’s combing through unsolved murders looking for anything that matches what we know about his… his victims.” When he told her what she was looking for she clung to him and sobbed for ten minutes. She probably hasn’t stopped crying yet. But she’s competent through everything, even heartbreak. “She hasn’t found a thing. If she can’t find them, no one can.”

“I’ll call the DA,” Hotch says, and leaves.

 

_I know what I’ve done.  
-Spencer Reid, “Revelations”_

 

Spencer gets his conditions. He doesn’t get Bennington—not enough security—but he’s okay with that; he hasn’t figured out how to explain things to his mother, anyway. It would be almost as bad for her to believe he’s inherited her schizophrenia as it would for her to know the truth.

He makes everyone else leave the room while he tells Gideon everything. He knows they’re recording him, but that’s okay. That’s evidence. This is a confession, pure and simple. Gideon doesn’t move, doesn’t even write anything down as he describes four deaths in graphic detail. His perfect memory brings up every aspect of the beatings, the screams, the murders, and he relishes it, reliving them again. He tells him how he left Alexa in the ravine and Margareta in the hotel room, how he dismembered and buried Dolores, how he burned Eileen beyond recognition.

“Now that I’ve told you my truth,” he says quietly when he’s finished, “will you tell me yours?”

Gideon shakes his head. “I already told you all I had to tell you, Spencer.”

He nods. He wasn’t really expecting anything more. “At least you came back. That’s why I told you. Or was that all just for Elle?”

That makes Gideon blink for the first time. “Elle?”

Spencer, startled, almost laughs. “You didn’t know?”

Gideon lowers his hands to the table, presses them down flat. “I saw your name on the news. All I saw was a disappearance and other victims. I didn’t stop to talk.”

Spencer narrows his eyes, feeling a boiling anger rise up within him. “You didn’t even talk to the others. You don’t even care, do you?” He clenches his fists and feels the cool handcuffs shift on his wrists. “You don’t care about anyone else. You only care about killers. That’s the only reason you came back for me. Because you know I’m a killer now.”

Gideon tries to say something else, but Spencer tunes it out. Whatever it is, he’s sure it isn’t sincere. That certainty is confirmed when Gideon stops, whispers “Elle,” jumps up from his seat, and runs out of the room.

He is barely aware of the tears that start to run down his cheeks.

 

_I just need you to know that I spend every day of my life proud to be your son.  
-Spencer Reid, “Amplification”_

 

Spencer’s official sentencing comes and goes. He repeats the confession. He tells the truth. There’s no point in hiding.

He’s glad when the handcuffs come off. He’s in an institution filled with other violent, mentally ill criminals. He doesn’t mind at all. They’ll be fascinating to talk to. Without any crimes to solve, he’ll have plenty of time for research. Maybe he’ll get a few more degrees. But first things first.

He settles into his room. He’s allowed pens and paper. He dates the first page and writes _Dear Mom_.

Then he begins, again, to lie.


End file.
